Messier 49: Giant Elliptical Galaxy in Virgo

M49 is the brightest member of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies and a good first stop when you explore that crowded part of the spring sky. It sits in the southern part of the cluster, a few degrees away from the dense region around Markarian's Chain.

What it is

M49 is a giant elliptical galaxy about 60 million light-years away. Its 9-arcminute length works out to roughly 150,000 light-years. Like other big ellipticals it is made of old, yellowish stars with little gas or dust, and it is surrounded by a swarm of globular clusters, about 6,300 by one count, far more than our own galaxy has. It ranks with M60 and M87 among the giant ellipticals of the cluster. Halton Arp listed it in his catalog of peculiar galaxies because of small fragments nearby.

When to see it

M49 is a spring object. It is highest around midnight in early April and well placed in the evening from April into June. From about 40°N it climbs to about 58° in the south. It lies close to the celestial equator, so observers in the Southern Hemisphere see it well too, in their autumn.

How to find it

The Virgo galaxies are hard to star-hop to because the area has few bright stars. One route starts at the galaxy M61, which sits between the 5th-magnitude stars 16 and 17 Virginis: M49 is about 4° north-northeast of M61. Another route uses Markarian's Chain, found halfway between Denebola in Leo and Vindemiatrix (Epsilon Virginis): from there M49 lies about 5° due south. M87 is about 4½° north of M49.

What you will see

Under dark skies, binoculars can show M49 as a faint fuzzy spot. A small telescope shows a bright round to slightly oval glow with a brighter center that fades smoothly outward; there is no structure to see. A larger telescope makes it brighter and larger and may show a 13th-magnitude foreground star near its edge, which is easy to mistake for a supernova. With 200 mm or more you can pick up fainter neighbors such as NGC 4470. It survives suburban skies better than most Virgo galaxies.

History

Charles Messier cataloged M49 on February 19, 1771. It was the first member of the Virgo Cluster ever found. Barnaba Oriani found it again on April 22, 1779, while following that year's comet, and some later catalogs wrongly credited him with the discovery. A possible supernova, 1969Q, was reported in the galaxy in 1969.