M85 (Galaxy)
The northernmost member of the Virgo Cluster, so it lies in Coma Berenices. It is a lenticular galaxy: a disc with no visible spiral arms.
Galaxy in Coma Berenices. Magnitude 9.1.
Can you see it from Guyana?
From Georgetown (6.8° N) it climbs to 79° above the northern horizon at its highest; from Lethem (3.4° N), to 75° above the northern horizon. It is highest at midnight on the night of 26 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 9.4° north-east of Denebola.
- 10x50 binoculars: Just detectable in binoculars from a dark site, as a faint smudge.
- A small telescope (80 to 100 mm): A bright oval with a brighter centre; M100 is 2.4° to the south.
- 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: 7.0′ × 5.3′, 22% of the Moon's width (the Moon is about 31′ wide).
- Brightness: magnitude 9.1. 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: 100,000 light-years across its catalogued outline; light crosses it in 100,000 years.
Apparent size from OpenNGC (Mattia Verga), CC-BY-SA-4.0.
What it is made of
- Type
- Lenticular galaxy
- Notable
- The northernmost member of the Virgo Cluster, which puts it in Coma Berenices.
What is in it, not measured:
- Old stars: in a bulge and a smooth disc
- A little gas and dust: often in a thin lane
- Dark matter: inferred from how its stars move
How we know: Distance from the median of 26 published estimates by several methods (no two direct ones agree to combine): NED-D (NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database, redshift-independent distances), median of 26 estimates: 15.45 Mpc, 10.10-18.50 Mpc (16th-84th percentile); e.g. 2013AJ....146...86T, 2010ApJ...717..603V, 2009ApJ...694..556B; 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: M100 (Galaxy) · M88 (Galaxy) · Coma Pinwheel (M99) · M98 (Galaxy) · M91 (Galaxy) · M86 (Galaxy)