M94 (Galaxy)
A compact spiral galaxy in Canes Venatici with a small, bright centre. It has used up most of its gas: stars make up 96% of the mass it shines with, the largest share of any galaxy measured on this site.
Galaxy in Canes Venatici. Magnitude 8.2.
Can you see it from Guyana?
From Georgetown (6.8° N) it climbs to 56° above the northern horizon at its highest; from Lethem (3.4° N), to 52° above the northern horizon. It is highest at midnight on the night of 2 Apr, 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 3.0° north of Cor Caroli.
- 10x50 binoculars: A faint smudge from a dark site.
- A small telescope (80 to 100 mm): A small, bright core in a fainter, nearly round glow; it shows even when the sky is not very dark.
- 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: 7.7′ × 6.7′, 25% of the Moon's width (the Moon is about 31′ wide).
- Brightness: magnitude 8.2. Fainter than the faintest stars in Georgetown (4.3) and Lethem (6.0): binoculars or a telescope.
- Distance: 15 million light-years. The light reaching your eye left it about 15 million years ago.
- True size: 34,000 light-years across its catalogued outline; light crosses it in 34,000 years.
Apparent size from OpenNGC (Mattia Verga), CC-BY-SA-4.0.
What it is made of
- Type
- Spiral galaxy
- Notable
- Stars are 95.7% of its visible mass, against 61% to 91% for the other galaxies the site has measured.
Measured: What its visible mass is made of: stars and gas, not dark matter.
- Stars: 95.7%, from its infrared light
- Atomic gas: 2.4%, hydrogen, from 21 cm radio maps
- Molecular gas: 1.9%, from carbon monoxide maps
Each mass is given to a tenth of a dex, so each share is good to about a quarter of itself. Dark matter is not counted. Leroy et al. 2008, AJ 136, 2782, Table 4 (VizieR J/AJ/136/2782), NGC 4736: log stellar mass 10.3, atomic gas 8.7, molecular gas 8.6 (Suns). Shares do not depend on the distance the paper adopted.
Also in it, not measured:
- Spiral arms: lit by young stars
- Dark matter halo: not in this tally; seen only by its gravity
How we know: Distance from its brightest red giants (the tip of the red giant branch): NED-D (NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database, redshift-independent distances), median of 3 TRGB estimates: 4.66 Mpc, 4.20-4.66 Mpc; e.g. 2011ApJS..195...18R, 2009AJ....138..332J, 2003A&A...398..467K; 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: Sunflower Galaxy (M63) · Galaxy M106 · Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) · M109 (Galaxy) · Needle Galaxy (NGC 4565) · Pinwheel Galaxy (M101)