M58 (Galaxy)
A spiral galaxy in the Virgo Cluster with a faint bar, so some class it between a normal and a barred spiral. Supernovae seen in it have been used to measure its distance.
Galaxy in Virgo. Magnitude 10.3.
Can you see it from Guyana?
From Georgetown (6.8° N) it climbs to 85° above the northern horizon at its highest; from Lethem (3.4° N), to 82° above the northern horizon. It is highest at midnight on the night of 29 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 6.0° west of Vindemiatrix.
- 10x50 binoculars: Just detectable in binoculars from a dark site, as a faint smudge. M89 is 0.9° to the north-west.
- A small telescope (80 to 100 mm): An oval glow with a bright, slightly elongated centre; M89 is 0.9° to the north-west.
- 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: 5.0′ × 3.8′, 16% of the Moon's width (the Moon is about 31′ wide).
- Brightness: magnitude 10.3. Fainter than the faintest stars in Georgetown (4.3) and Lethem (6.0): binoculars or a telescope.
- Distance: 55 million light-years. The light reaching your eye left it about 55 million years ago.
- True size: 80,000 light-years across its catalogued outline; light crosses it in 80,000 years.
Apparent size from OpenNGC (Mattia Verga), CC-BY-SA-4.0.
What it is made of
- Type
- Spiral galaxy
- Notable
- Supernovae in it give its distance directly: estimates from a type Ia and a type II supernova both come out near 21 Mpc, about 70 million light-years.
What is in it, not measured:
- Stars: an older central bulge and a disc of younger stars
- Gas and dust: in the spiral arms, where new stars form
- Dark matter: inferred from how fast it spins
How we know: Distance from the median of 23 published estimates by several methods (no two direct ones agree to combine): NED-D (NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database, redshift-independent distances), median of 23 estimates: 16.80 Mpc, 15.96-21.44 Mpc (16th-84th percentile); e.g. 2013AJ....146...86T, 2009ApJS..182..474S, 2009AJ....138..323T; 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: M89 (Galaxy) · M59 (Galaxy) · M90 (Galaxy) · M60 (Galaxy) · Virgo Galaxy (M87) · M91 (Galaxy)