Galaxy
M96 (M96)
In Leo (Leo) • Magnitude 10.1 • 7.1 arcminutes
Open the free AstroPlanner with M96 pre-selected, scored against your telescope, location, and the live cloud forecast.
The brightest member of the Leo I galaxy group, a gently tilted spiral about 35 million light-years away. The Leo I group was one of the first galaxy groups studied to demonstrate that dark matter must exist to explain why its galaxies stay gravitationally bound together.
M96 at a glance
| Catalog IDs | M96, N 3368 |
| Type | Galaxy |
| Constellation | Leo (Leo) |
| Right ascension | 10h 46m 48s |
| Declination | +11° 49' 12" |
| Apparent magnitude | 10.10 |
| Surface brightness | 13.2 mag/arcsec² |
| Angular size | 7.1 × 5.1 arcmin |
| Max altitude at 45°N | 57° |
| Best imaging months | Nov, Dec, Jan |
How to image M96
M96 sits in the constellation Leo at right ascension 10h 46m 48s and declination +11° 49' 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, M96 needs the darkest skies you can find: surface brightness, not just apparent magnitude, drives whether it will lift out of the gradient.