The Whirlpool Galaxy M51 (NGC 5194; mag 8.4) in Canes Venatici will be well placed in the evening sky in coming weeks. On 14 April it will reach its highest point in the sky at around midnight local time, and on subsequent evenings it will culminate four minutes earlier each day.
From Cambridge , it is visible all night. It will become visible at around 20:35 (EST), 47° above your north-eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. It will then reach its highest point in the sky at 00:40, 85° above your northern horizon. It will be lost to dawn twilight at around 04:51, 46° above your north-western horizon.
At a declination of 47°11'N, it is easiest to see from the northern hemisphere but cannot be seen from latitudes much south of 22°S.
At magnitude 8.4, M51 is quite faint, and certainly not visible to the naked eye, but can be viewed through a pair of binoculars or small telescope.
The position of M51 is as follows:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| M51 | 13h29m50s | 47°11'N | Canes Venatici | 8.4 | 11'00" |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.
The sky on 15 Apr 2026
| The sky on 15 April 2026 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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4% 27 days old |
All times shown in EDT.
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Source
The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE430 planetary ephemeris published by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
This event was automatically generated by searching the ephemeris for planetary alignments which are of interest to amateur astronomers, and the text above was generated based on an estimate of your location.
Image credit
© Digitised Sky Survey (DSS); Second Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS-II)