Galaxy
Antennae Galaxies (NGC4038)
In Corvus (Crv) • Magnitude 10.3 • 5.2 arcminutes
Open the free AstroPlanner with Antennae Galaxies pre-selected, scored against your telescope, location, and the live cloud forecast.
Pair of colliding galaxies in Corvus with long tidal tails.
Antennae Galaxies at a glance
| Catalog IDs | N 4038, C 60 |
| Type | Galaxy |
| Constellation | Corvus (Crv) |
| Right ascension | 12h 01m 55s |
| Declination | -18° 52' 12" |
| Apparent magnitude | 10.30 |
| Surface brightness | 13.9 mag/arcsec² |
| Angular size | 5.2 × 3.1 arcmin |
| Max altitude at 45°N | 26° |
| Best imaging months | Mar, Apr, May |
How to image Antennae Galaxies
Antennae Galaxies sits in the constellation Corvus at right ascension 12h 01m 55s and declination -18° 52' 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, Antennae Galaxies needs the darkest skies you can find: surface brightness, not just apparent magnitude, drives whether it will lift out of the gradient.