M89
ILLUSTRATION FROM HUBBLE TYPE E · SURFACE BRIGHTNESS 24.1 MAG/ARCSEC² · MAJOR AXIS 8.13′ · POSITION ANGLE 150°
OVERVIEW
] GALAXYM89 is an elliptical galaxy E in the constellation Virgo, shining at apparent magnitude 10.08 (). Other catalogues list it as 2MASX J12353988+1233217, LEDA 41968 and MCG +02-32-149, among 8 designations in total. It was discovered in 1781.
- WHAT IT IS
- Elliptical galaxy
- HOW BIG ON THE SKY
- 8.1
- HOW BRIGHT (V)
About 0.3 of the full Moon's width.
A small telescope reaches it.
OBSERVING
] FROM WHERE YOU AREWhat it takes to see M89 for yourself. Everything in this part of the page is worked out for a real horizon, a real night and the equipment you say you have.
Say where you are, and this line says when M89 is worth going out for.
THROUGH AN EYEPIECE
] 150 MM TELESCOPE · 25 MM EYEPIECEOut of reach of binoculars; a 150 mm telescope reaches it. M89 covers 8.1′ of sky against a of 1.08°, so at 48× it is a small patch, centred.
- 48×
- 1.08
- 1.25
- 13.0
- SIZE ON THE SKY
- 8.1
- FILLS OF THE FIELD
- 13% of the width
- APPARENT MAGNITUDE ()
- 10.08 · within reach
M89 is not a point of light, so the limit above is the wrong one to hold it against: the same brightness spread over 8.1′ of sky is harder than a star of it, and goes first — spread out, it comes to 24.1 . Catalogued sizes are measured to a photographic contour, and the part an eye sees is usually smaller.
APPARENT PLACE
] EQUINOX J2026.8Where a telescope has to be pointed today, which is not quite where the catalogue records the object: the coordinate grid itself has turned since the year 2000 the catalogue is referred to.
- RIGHT ASCENSION
- DECLINATION
- GRID TURNED SINCE
- 21.8
- PROPER MOTION SINCE
- none published
Computed for 2026-10-12 00:00 UT. No proper motion is published for M89, so nothing here moves the object; what separates this from the catalogued position above is the coordinate grid turning under it — about fifty arcseconds a year of precession since 2000, and the small nodding of the Earth’s axis on top of that. The catalogue it came from publishes no error for that position, so nothing here says how far this arithmetic can be trusted — the digits above are as precise as the place they were computed from, and no more. Aberration, parallax and refraction are left out. Aberration swings every position by up to twenty arcseconds over a year; parallax stays under an arcsecond for all but the nearest stars; refraction is nothing overhead and about half a degree at the horizon, where it answers to the air, not the sky. The same figure for any date.
CATALOG DATA
] 17 FIELDSThe raw catalogue values, as the source published them, with the error bars where one was published — sorted by what each set of figures is about rather than by the order they happened to be stored in.
WHAT KIND OF THING IT IS
What the object is in itself, rather than how it happens to look from here.
- Hubble type
HOW BRIGHT IT IS
What the light adds up to, measured through one filter at a time. A magnitude is a brightness on a backwards scale — the smaller the number, the brighter the object.
- Apparent magnitude ()
- Apparent magnitude ()
- Apparent magnitude ()
- Apparent magnitude ( band)
- Apparent magnitude ()
- Surface brightness
- 24.11
WHERE IT IS AND HOW IT MOVES
Position, motion across the sky and the size it covers on it. These are measurements of the object as seen from here, so every one of them depends on where here is.
- 274
- Redshift (z)
- Redshift (z, CMB frame)
- Major axis
- 8.13
- Minor axis
- 8
- 150
WHEN IT WAS FOUND
Who first saw it, from where, and by what method.
- Discovered by
- Charles Messier
OTHER NAMES AND NUMBERS
The identifiers other catalogues file this object under, for anyone joining this data to theirs.
- OpenNGC type code
- G
- Wikidata item
- Q14337
- Wikipedia article
- Messier 89
ALSO KNOWN AS
] 8 DESIGNATIONS- 2MASX 2MASX J12353988+1233217
- LEDA LEDA 41968
- MCG MCG +02-32-149
- Messier M 89
- NGC NGC 4552
- PGC PGC 41968
- SDSS SDSS J123539.80+123322.8
- UGC UGC 7760
LOOK IT UP ELSEWHERE
] 4 SERVICESEach link carries the identifier printed beside it. Nothing on this page is a measurement of our own, so a number that disagrees with one of these is worth reporting — and a service that has never catalogued this object under this name will say so plainly.
- SIMBADM89
Cross-identifications, measured values and the reference behind each of them.
- NEDM89
Redshift-independent distances, photometry across the spectrum and the extragalactic literature.
- ADSobject:"M89"
Papers indexed against this object rather than against the string, newest first.
- VizieR244″ around 188.9159 +12.5563
Every published table with a row at this position, searched by coordinates rather than by name.
CITE THIS PAGE
] DR1This page is live and its numbers move when an upstream refreshes, so the citation names the release the rows belong to rather than the day you read them. The release itself is frozen, republished as a bundle, and is what a data-availability statement should point at.
SpaceCatalog. M89 [catalogue entry]. Data release DR1 (2026-08-21). https://spacecatalog.org/object/m89
@misc{spacecatalog_m89,
author = {{SpaceCatalog}},
title = {{M89}},
howpublished = {SpaceCatalog, data release DR1 (2026-08-21)},
year = {2026},
url = {https://spacecatalog.org/object/m89},
note = {Catalogue entry, data release DR1 (2026-08-21). Values from OpenNGC.}
}The values above were taken from OpenNGC — CC-BY-SA-4.0. Citing this page does not replace citing that catalogue, and its licence is share-alike: the terms reach whatever you build from these rows.
That catalogue asks for this acknowledgement: OpenNGC, Mattia Verga (github.com/mattiaverga/OpenNGC). Fields derived from it stay under CC BY-SA 4.0.