NGC 55 (Galaxy)
A nearby galaxy in Sculptor seen almost exactly edge-on, so its disc stretches into a streak ten times as long as it is wide. Cepheids and its brightest red giants put it about 6.7 million light-years away.
Galaxy in Sculptor. Magnitude 8.5.
Can you see it from Guyana?
From Georgetown (6.8° N) it climbs to 44° above the southern horizon at its highest; from Lethem (3.4° N), to 48° above the southern horizon. It is highest at midnight on the night of 22 Sep, 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 3.8° north-west of Ankaa.
- 10x50 binoculars: A faint smudge from a dark site.
- A small telescope (80 to 100 mm): A long, bright sliver half a degree long; low power shows it whole.
- A camera: Spans about 40% of an APS-C frame at 1,000 mm (field 1.3° × 0.9°); needs a tracking mount.
How big, how bright, how far
- Size on the sky: 29.9′ × 3.0′, 96% 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: 6.7 million light-years. The light reaching your eye left it about 6.7 million years ago.
- True size: 58,000 light-years across its catalogued outline; light crosses it in 58,000 years.
Apparent size from OpenNGC (Mattia Verga), CC-BY-SA-4.0.
What it is made of
- Type
- Barred irregular galaxy, seen edge-on
What is in it, not measured:
- Stars: many of them young
- Plenty of gas: fuel for new stars
- Dark matter: inferred from how its gas moves
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 18 Cepheids/TRGB estimates: 2.04 Mpc, 1.87-2.12 Mpc (16th-84th percentile); e.g. 2016AJ....151...88B, 2011ApJ...738..150T, 2010ApJ...715..277B; 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 300 (Galaxy) · Sculptor Galaxy (NGC 253) · NGC 247 (Galaxy) · NGC 1097 (Galaxy) · Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) · Fornax A (NGC 1316)