NGC 1097 (Galaxy)
A barred spiral galaxy in Fornax whose centre SIMBAD classes as a LINER, a mildly active nucleus. Its distance is still uncertain: estimates by different methods run from about 37 to 81 million light-years.
Galaxy in Fornax. Magnitude 9.8.
Can you see it from Guyana?
From Georgetown (6.8° N) it climbs to 53° above the southern horizon at its highest; from Lethem (3.4° N), to 56° above the southern horizon. It is highest at midnight on the night of 30 Oct, in the middle of its season. The page works out tonight's rise, highest point and set for both towns in Guyana time (UTC-4), and where the Moon is.
What you'll see
- Your eyes: Not visible to the eye. It lies 10.3° north of Acamar.
- 10x50 binoculars: Just detectable in binoculars from a dark site, as a faint smudge.
- A small telescope (80 to 100 mm): An oval glow with a bright centre and a hint of the bar across it under a dark sky.
- A camera: Tiny on camera: it needs 2,000 mm or more of focal length on a tracking mount.
How big, how bright, how far
- Size on the sky: 10.6′ × 6.4′, 34% of the Moon's width (the Moon is about 31′ wide).
- Brightness: magnitude 9.8. Fainter than the faintest stars in Georgetown (4.3) and Lethem (6.0): binoculars or a telescope.
- Distance: 50 million light-years. The light reaching your eye left it about 50 million years ago.
- True size: 160,000 light-years across its catalogued outline; light crosses it in 160,000 years.
Apparent size from OpenNGC (Mattia Verga), CC-BY-SA-4.0.
What it is made of
- Type
- Barred spiral galaxy
What is in it, not measured:
- Stars: an older central bulge and a disc of younger stars
- Gas and dust: in the spiral arms, where new stars form
- Dark matter: inferred from how fast it spins
How we know: Distance from the median of 32 published estimates by several methods (no two direct ones agree to combine): NED-D (NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database, redshift-independent distances), median of 32 estimates: 15.95 Mpc, 11.30-24.80 Mpc (16th-84th percentile); e.g. 2017ApJ...841..127M, 2016AJ....152...50T, 2014MNRAS.444..527S; retrieved 2026-10-21. True size: the apparent size times the distance (apparent size: OpenNGC (Mattia Verga, CC BY-SA 4.0), commit 4e2398a2).
More deep-sky objects: Fornax A (NGC 1316) · NGC 300 (Galaxy) · Sculptor Galaxy (NGC 253) · NGC 247 (Galaxy) · M77 (Cetus A) · NGC 55 (Galaxy)