Galaxy
M90 (M90)
In Virgo (Vir) • Magnitude 9.5 • 10 arcminutes
Open the free AstroPlanner with M90 pre-selected, scored against your telescope, location, and the live cloud forecast.
One of the few galaxies with a confirmed blueshift — it is approaching the Milky Way at about 300 km/s, making it the fastest-known galaxy moving toward us. This is not because the universe is contracting locally but because M90's orbital velocity within the Virgo Cluster exceeds the general cosmic expansion in our direction.
M90 at a glance
| Catalog IDs | M90, N 4569 |
| Type | Galaxy |
| Constellation | Virgo (Vir) |
| Right ascension | 12h 36m 47s |
| Declination | +13° 09' 36" |
| Apparent magnitude | 9.47 |
| Surface brightness | 13.1 mag/arcsec² |
| Angular size | 10.0 × 4.5 arcmin |
| Max altitude at 45°N | 58° |
| Best imaging months | Dec, Jan, Feb |
How to image M90
M90 sits in the constellation Virgo at right ascension 12h 36m 47s and declination +13° 09' 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, M90 needs the darkest skies you can find: surface brightness, not just apparent magnitude, drives whether it will lift out of the gradient.