M59 (Galaxy)
An elliptical galaxy in Virgo, 0.4° from M60. Unlike most ellipticals it still forms some stars, in a disc near its core.
Galaxy in Virgo. Magnitude 9.6.
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 30 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 5.0° west of Vindemiatrix.
- 10x50 binoculars: Just detectable in binoculars from a dark site, as a faint smudge. M60 is 0.4° to the east in the same field.
- A small telescope (80 to 100 mm): A small oval glow with a bright centre, with M60 0.4° to the east in the same field.
- A camera: Tiny on camera: it needs 2,000 mm or more of focal length on a tracking mount. At 1,500 mm it shares the frame with M60.
How big, how bright, how far
- Size on the sky: 4.5′ × 3.2′, 15% of the Moon's width (the Moon is about 31′ wide).
- Brightness: magnitude 9.6. 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: 67,000 light-years across its catalogued outline; light crosses it in 67,000 years.
Apparent size from OpenNGC (Mattia Verga), CC-BY-SA-4.0.
What it is made of
- Type
- Elliptical galaxy
- Notable
- An elliptical that bucks the trend: it shows newborn stars in a disc near its core. Johann Koehler found it days before Messier listed it in 1779.
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 46 published estimates by several methods (no two direct ones agree to combine): NED-D (NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database, redshift-independent distances), median of 46 estimates: 15.60 Mpc, 13.84-17.30 Mpc (16th-84th percentile); e.g. 2013AJ....146...86T, 2011A&A...532A.154C, 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: M60 (Galaxy) · M58 (Galaxy) · M89 (Galaxy) · M90 (Galaxy) · Virgo Galaxy (M87) · M91 (Galaxy)