© Digitised Sky Survey (DSS); Second Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS-II)

The Whirlpool Galaxy is well placed

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Deep Sky feed

Objects: M51
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The sky at

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 Seattle , it is visible all night. It will become visible at around 21:15 (PDT), 51° above your eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. It will be lost to dawn twilight at around 05:01, 51° above your 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.

Begin typing the name of a town near to you, and then select the town from the list of options which appear below.

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 0'00"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 14 Apr 2026

The sky on 14 April 2026
Sunrise
06:20
Sunset
19:56
Twilight ends
21:51
Twilight begins
04:26

26-day old moon
Waning Crescent

3%

26 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:46 11:38 17:29
Venus 07:15 14:39 22:03
Moon 05:04 10:51 16:53
Mars 05:46 11:51 17:57
Jupiter 10:54 18:48 02:42
Saturn 05:59 12:06 18:12
All times shown in PDT.

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)

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Seattle

Latitude:
Longitude:
Timezone:

47.61°N
122.33°W
PDT

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