M49 (Galaxy)
The brightest galaxy of the Virgo Cluster on Messier's list, a nearly round elliptical in southern Virgo. It sits 4.4° south of M87, away from the crowded heart of the cluster.
Galaxy in Virgo. Magnitude 8.3.
Can you see it from Guyana?
From Georgetown (6.8° N) it climbs to 89°, almost straight overhead at its highest; from Lethem (3.4° N), to 86° above the northern horizon. It is highest at midnight on the night of 27 Mar, in the middle of its season. The page works out tonight's rise, highest point and set for both towns in Guyana time (UTC-4), and where the Moon is.
What you'll see
- Your eyes: Not visible to the eye. It lies 8.5° west of Vindemiatrix.
- 10x50 binoculars: A faint smudge from a dark site.
- A small telescope (80 to 100 mm): A bright, round glow with a brighter centre; the brightest of the Virgo galaxies at low power.
- A camera: Tiny on camera: it needs 2,000 mm or more of focal length on a tracking mount.
How big, how bright, how far
- Size on the sky: 10.2′ × 8.4′, 33% of the Moon's width (the Moon is about 31′ wide).
- Brightness: magnitude 8.3. Fainter than the faintest stars in Georgetown (4.3) and Lethem (6.0): binoculars or a telescope.
- Distance: 50 million light-years. The light reaching your eye left it about 50 million years ago.
- True size: 160,000 light-years across its catalogued outline; light crosses it in 160,000 years.
Apparent size from OpenNGC (Mattia Verga), CC-BY-SA-4.0.
What it is made of
- Type
- Elliptical galaxy
- Notable
- Nearly spherical, with almost no gas or dust between its stars and no sign of recent star formation.
What is in it, not measured:
- Old stars: mostly old, yellow and red
- Very little cold gas or dust
- Dark matter: inferred from how its stars move
How we know: Distance from the median of 68 published estimates by several methods (no two direct ones agree to combine): NED-D (NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database, redshift-independent distances), median of 68 estimates: 16.20 Mpc, 13.67-18.13 Mpc (16th-84th percentile); e.g. 2017A&A...603A.104H, 2013AJ....146...86T, 2010ApJ...717..603V; retrieved 2026-10-21. True size: the apparent size times the distance (apparent size: OpenNGC (Mattia Verga, CC BY-SA 4.0), commit 4e2398a2).
More deep-sky objects: M61 (Galaxy) · M58 (Galaxy) · Virgo Galaxy (M87) · M59 (Galaxy) · M89 (Galaxy) · M60 (Galaxy)