Galaxy
M89 (M89)
In Virgo (Vir) • Magnitude 10.7 • 5.1 arcminutes
Open the free AstroPlanner with M89 pre-selected, scored against your telescope, location, and the live cloud forecast.
An unusually round elliptical galaxy — it appears nearly perfectly circular from any direction, suggesting it may genuinely be almost spherical rather than stretched. Evidence of past jet activity from its nucleus hints that its central black hole was once far more energetically active than it is today.
M89 at a glance
| Catalog IDs | M89, N 4552 |
| Type | Galaxy |
| Constellation | Virgo (Vir) |
| Right ascension | 12h 35m 42s |
| Declination | +12° 33' 36" |
| Apparent magnitude | 10.73 |
| Surface brightness | 12.8 mag/arcsec² |
| Angular size | 5.1 × 4.7 arcmin |
| Max altitude at 45°N | 58° |
| Best imaging months | Dec, Jan, Feb |
How to image M89
M89 sits in the constellation Virgo at right ascension 12h 35m 42s and declination +12° 33' 36". To frame and integrate it well, AstroPlanner will compute the optimal moonless window for tonight from your location, the field-of-view fit against your sensor and focal length, the suggested total integration time given your aperture and sky Bortle class, and a cloud-aware schedule that drops it from the plan if your nearest cloud forecast spike overlaps the best altitude window. As a galaxy, M89 needs the darkest skies you can find: surface brightness, not just apparent magnitude, drives whether it will lift out of the gradient.