M86 (Galaxy)
The largest outline of the Virgo galaxies on Messier's list, 11.5 by 8.4 arcminutes. It pairs with M84, 0.28° to the west, in the middle of the cluster.
Galaxy in Virgo. Magnitude 8.9.
Can you see it from Guyana?
From Georgetown (6.8° N) it climbs to 84° above the northern horizon at its highest; from Lethem (3.4° N), to 81° 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 9.0° west of Vindemiatrix.
- 10x50 binoculars: A faint smudge from a dark site. M84 is 0.28° away in the same field.
- A small telescope (80 to 100 mm): An oval glow larger than M84's, 0.28° to its east; M87 is 1.3° to the south-east.
- A camera: Tiny on camera: it needs 2,000 mm or more of focal length on a tracking mount. At 1,000 mm it shares the frame with M84.
How big, how bright, how far
- Size on the sky: 11.5′ × 8.4′, 37% of the Moon's width (the Moon is about 31′ wide).
- Brightness: magnitude 8.9. 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: 180,000 light-years across its catalogued outline; light crosses it in 180,000 years.
Apparent size from OpenNGC (Mattia Verga), CC-BY-SA-4.0.
What it is made of
- Type
- Lenticular or elliptical galaxy
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 53 published estimates by several methods (no two direct ones agree to combine): NED-D (NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database, redshift-independent distances), median of 53 estimates: 16.80 Mpc, 14.26-17.70 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: M84 (Galaxy) · Virgo Galaxy (M87) · M88 (Galaxy) · M89 (Galaxy) · Coma Pinwheel (M99) · M90 (Galaxy)