M95 (Galaxy)
A spiral galaxy in Leo, in a small group with M96 and M105 about 32 million light-years away. Stars make up 91% of the mass it shines with.
Galaxy in Leo. Magnitude 9.8.
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 28 Feb, 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 8.7° east of Regulus.
- 10x50 binoculars: Just detectable in binoculars from a dark site, as a faint smudge. M96 is 0.7° to the east.
- A small telescope (80 to 100 mm): A round glow with a bright centre; M96 is 0.7° to the 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 M96.
How big, how bright, how far
- Size on the sky: 7.2′ × 4.5′, 23% of the Moon's width (the Moon is about 31′ wide).
- Brightness: magnitude 9.8. Fainter than the faintest stars in Georgetown (4.3) and Lethem (6.0): binoculars or a telescope.
- Distance: 32 million light-years. The light reaching your eye left it about 32 million years ago.
- True size: 66,000 light-years across its catalogued outline; light crosses it in 66,000 years.
Apparent size from OpenNGC (Mattia Verga), CC-BY-SA-4.0.
What it is made of
- Type
- Spiral galaxy
- Notable
- A ring of star formation almost 2,000 light-years across surrounds its golden core.
Measured: What its visible mass is made of: stars and gas, not dark matter.
- Stars: 90.7%, from its infrared light
- Atomic gas: 5.7%, hydrogen, from 21 cm radio maps
- Molecular gas: 3.6%, 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 3351: log stellar mass 10.4, atomic gas 9.2, molecular gas 9.0 (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 Cepheid variable stars and its brightest red giants (the tip of the red giant branch): NED-D (NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database, redshift-independent distances), median of 25 Cepheids/TRGB estimates: 9.67 Mpc, 9.33-10.42 Mpc (16th-84th percentile); e.g. 2018ApJS..235...23S, 2007ApJ...661..815R, 2006ApJS..165..108S; 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: M96 (Galaxy) · M105 (Galaxy) · M98 (Galaxy) · Coma Pinwheel (M99) · M100 (Galaxy) · M84 (Galaxy)