Bode's Galaxy (M81)

A bright, tidy spiral — a favourite target for small telescopes.

Also called: M81.

🕒 When can I see it?🚀 Travel there

Bode's Galaxy (M81) — Drawn, not photographed.

What it is

One of the most textbook-perfect spiral galaxies, gravitationally distorting its neighbor M82.

Spiral galaxy: A flat disc of stars wound into arms. Ours is one. Every kind of thing there is →

How to find Bode's Galaxy

Look in the constellation Ursa Major.

It is best placed in the spring if you are north of the equator.

Circumpolar (never sets) from many northern latitudes; not visible from most of the Southern Hemisphere.

Star-hop: A bright oval glow in a 4-6 inch scope from a dark sky; the spiral arms need photography.

The Planetarium works out where it actually is from your own place and the date — including whether it is above the horizon at all tonight.

Show me Bode's Galaxy in tonight's sky

What you will really see

With binoculars

Binoculars show it as a small, soft, grey patch. Not the photograph — and unlike the photograph, it is arriving in your eyes right now.

Through a small telescope, on a good night

A faint fuzzy oval of soft light — the bright core shows; the arms only hint at themselves.

🔭 See it drawn as it looks through a telescope

🖨️ A sheet to print for this

🖨️ Print a sheet and go and look

🖨️ Sheet to take outside →

Worth knowing about Bode's Galaxy

On that same scale, Bode's Galaxy would be about 12 kilometers away. Light takes 11.8 million years to get here from Bode's Galaxy, so what you are looking at is Bode's Galaxy as it was 11.8 million years ago.

What it is made of: A spiral galaxy, one of the most 'textbook-perfect' known — smooth, symmetric arms.
What makes it worth knowing: Its gravity is dramatically distorting neighbor M82 (the Cigar Galaxy), pulling a bridge of hydrogen gas between the two, while M81 itself stays almost undisturbed.

How did anyone measure the Earth in the first place?

The numbers