Galaxy
Cat's Eye Galaxy (M94)
In Canes Venatici (CVn) • Magnitude 8.2 • 14 arcminutes
Open the free AstroPlanner with Cat's Eye Galaxy pre-selected, scored against your telescope, location, and the live cloud forecast.
A galaxy with two distinct ring structures: a bright inner ring crackling with active star formation, and a broader, more diffuse outer ring of older stars — making it a rare "double-ring" galaxy. The inner starburst ring is thought to be fuelled by gas funnelled inward by density waves propagating through the galactic disk.
Cat's Eye Galaxy at a glance
| Catalog IDs | M94, N 4736 |
| Type | Galaxy |
| Constellation | Canes Venatici (CVn) |
| Right ascension | 12h 50m 53s |
| Declination | +41° 07' 12" |
| Apparent magnitude | 8.24 |
| Surface brightness | 12.2 mag/arcsec² |
| Angular size | 14.0 × 12.0 arcmin |
| Max altitude at 45°N | 86° |
| Best imaging months | Dec, Jan, Feb |
How to image Cat's Eye Galaxy
Cat's Eye Galaxy sits in the constellation Canes Venatici at right ascension 12h 50m 53s and declination +41° 07' 12". 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, Cat's Eye Galaxy needs the darkest skies you can find: surface brightness, not just apparent magnitude, drives whether it will lift out of the gradient.