NGC 300 (Galaxy)
A nearby face-on spiral in Sculptor, about 6 million light-years away by its Cepheids and red giants. Its light is spread so thin that it needs a dark sky despite its size.
Galaxy in Sculptor. Magnitude 8.7.
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 49° above the southern horizon. It is highest at midnight on the night of 2 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 7.2° north-east of Ankaa.
- 10x50 binoculars: A faint smudge from a dark site.
- A small telescope (80 to 100 mm): A large, very faint round glow with a slightly brighter middle; the lowest power and a dark sky.
- A camera: Spans about 40% of an APS-C frame at 1,500 mm (field 0.9° × 0.6°); needs a tracking mount.
How big, how bright, how far
- Size on the sky: 19.4′ × 13.1′, 62% of the Moon's width (the Moon is about 31′ wide).
- Brightness: magnitude 8.7. Fainter than the faintest stars in Georgetown (4.3) and Lethem (6.0): binoculars or a telescope.
- Distance: 6 million light-years. The light reaching your eye left it about 6 million years ago.
- True size: 36,000 light-years across its catalogued outline; light crosses it in 36,000 years.
Apparent size from OpenNGC (Mattia Verga), CC-BY-SA-4.0.
What it is made of
- Type
- Spiral galaxy, seen nearly face-on
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 Cepheid variable stars and its brightest red giants (the tip of the red giant branch): NED-D (NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database, redshift-independent distances), median of 48 Cepheids/TRGB estimates: 1.94 Mpc, 1.81-2.04 Mpc (16th-84th percentile); e.g. 2016AJ....151...88B, 2010ApJ...715..277B, 2009ApJS..183...67D; 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 55 (Galaxy) · Sculptor Galaxy (NGC 253) · NGC 247 (Galaxy) · NGC 1097 (Galaxy) · Fornax A (NGC 1316) · Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC)