Galaxy
M95 (M95)
In Leo (Leo) • Magnitude 10.5 • 7.4 arcminutes
Open the free AstroPlanner with M95 pre-selected, scored against your telescope, location, and the live cloud forecast.
A barred spiral galaxy in Leo with a particularly well-defined ring of active star formation surrounding its central bar — a classic "ringed barred spiral." The bar acts like a cosmic pipeline, funnelling raw gas inward by gravity to ignite new stars in the surrounding ring.
M95 at a glance
| Catalog IDs | M95, N 3351 |
| Type | Galaxy |
| Constellation | Leo (Leo) |
| Right ascension | 10h 43m 59s |
| Declination | +11° 41' 60" |
| Apparent magnitude | 10.53 |
| Surface brightness | 13.3 mag/arcsec² |
| Angular size | 7.4 × 5.0 arcmin |
| Max altitude at 45°N | 57° |
| Best imaging months | Nov, Dec, Jan |
How to image M95
M95 sits in the constellation Leo at right ascension 10h 43m 59s and declination +11° 41' 60". 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, M95 needs the darkest skies you can find: surface brightness, not just apparent magnitude, drives whether it will lift out of the gradient.