Fornax A (NGC 1316)
A large galaxy in Fornax that SIMBAD classes as a radio galaxy, Fornax A. Its catalogued outline spans about 230,000 light-years, the widest of any galaxy on this site.
Galaxy in Fornax. Magnitude 8.5.
Can you see it from Guyana?
From Georgetown (6.8° N) it climbs to 46° above the southern horizon at its highest; from Lethem (3.4° N), to 50° above the southern horizon. It is highest at midnight on the night of 9 Nov, 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 5.7° north-east of Acamar.
- 10x50 binoculars: A faint smudge from a dark site.
- A small telescope (80 to 100 mm): A bright oval with a bright core; dark lanes of dust need a larger telescope.
- A camera: Spans about 40% of an APS-C frame at 2,000 mm (field 0.7° × 0.4°); needs a tracking mount.
How big, how bright, how far
- Size on the sky: 13.5′ × 7.7′, 43% of the Moon's width (the Moon is about 31′ wide).
- Brightness: magnitude 8.5. Fainter than the faintest stars in Georgetown (4.3) and Lethem (6.0): binoculars or a telescope.
- Distance: 60 million light-years. The light reaching your eye left it about 60 million years ago.
- True size: 230,000 light-years across its catalogued outline; light crosses it in 230,000 years.
Apparent size from OpenNGC (Mattia Verga), CC-BY-SA-4.0.
What it is made of
- Type
- Lenticular galaxy and radio source
- Notable
- It bears the scars of earlier mergers with other galaxies; its small companion NGC 1317 seems untouched.
What is in it, not measured:
- Old stars: in a bulge and a smooth disc
- A little gas and dust: often in a thin lane
- Dark matter: inferred from how its stars move
How we know: Distance from the median of 106 published estimates by several methods (no two direct ones agree to combine): NED-D (NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database, redshift-independent distances), median of 106 estimates: 17.80 Mpc, 15.24-22.40 Mpc (16th-84th percentile); e.g. 2016AJ....152...50T, 2014MNRAS.444..527S, 2014ApJ...792..129N; 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: NGC 1097 (Galaxy) · NGC 300 (Galaxy) · Sculptor Galaxy (NGC 253) · Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) · NGC 55 (Galaxy) · NGC 247 (Galaxy)