NGC 2997 (Galaxy)
A large spiral galaxy in Antlia seen at a tilt. Its distance is unsettled: estimates by different methods run from about 24 to 39 million light-years.
Galaxy in Antlia. Magnitude 9.4.
Can you see it from Guyana?
From Georgetown (6.8° N) it climbs to 52° above the southern horizon at its highest; from Lethem (3.4° N), to 55° above the southern horizon. It is highest at midnight on the night of 14 Feb, 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 14.3° north-east of Suhail.
- 10x50 binoculars: Just detectable in binoculars from a dark site, as a faint smudge.
- A small telescope (80 to 100 mm): A large, faint oval glow with a brighter middle; a dark site and low power.
- A camera: Tiny on camera: it needs 2,000 mm or more of focal length on a tracking mount. The photo above is a near-infrared VLT view.
How big, how bright, how far
- Size on the sky: 10.3′ × 6.2′, 33% of the Moon's width (the Moon is about 31′ wide).
- Brightness: magnitude 9.4. Fainter than the faintest stars in Georgetown (4.3) and Lethem (6.0): binoculars or a telescope.
- Distance: 30 million light-years. The light reaching your eye left it about 30 million years ago.
- True size: 77,000 light-years across its catalogued outline; light crosses it in 77,000 years.
Apparent size from OpenNGC (Mattia Verga), CC-BY-SA-4.0.
What it is made of
- Type
- Spiral galaxy
- Notable
- The brightest member of a group of galaxies named after it.
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 14 published estimates by several methods (no two direct ones agree to combine): NED-D (NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database, redshift-independent distances), median of 14 estimates: 7.91 Mpc, 7.43-12.02 Mpc (16th-84th percentile); e.g. 2011A&A...532A.104N, 2009ApJ...699...76H, 2009AJ....138..323T; 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: Antennae Galaxies (NGC 4038 and NGC 4039) · Centaurus A (NGC 5128) · Sombrero Galaxy (M104) · M95 (Galaxy) · M96 (Galaxy) · M105 (Galaxy)