Sculptor Galaxy (NGC 253)
A bright barred spiral galaxy in Sculptor, also a starburst galaxy. Visible with binoculars, but a telescope shows more detail.
Galaxy in Sculptor. Magnitude 8.0.
Can you see it from Guyana?
From Georgetown (6.8° N) it climbs to 58° above the southern horizon at its highest; from Lethem (3.4° N), to 61° above the southern horizon. It is highest at midnight on the night of 30 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.
- 10x50 binoculars: A faint smudge from a dark site.
- A small telescope (80 to 100 mm): Faint and diffuse: use low power from a dark site.
- 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: 27′ × 4.6′, 87% of the Moon's width (the Moon is about 31′ wide).
- Brightness: magnitude 8.0. Fainter than the faintest stars in Georgetown (4.3) and Lethem (6.0): binoculars or a telescope.
- Distance: 11 million light-years. The light reaching your eye left it about 11 million years ago.
Apparent size from OpenNGC (Mattia Verga), CC-BY-SA-4.0.
What it is made of
- Type
- Starburst Galaxy
- Distance
- Approx. 11.4 million Lightyears
- True size
- Approx. 90,000 Lightyears diameter
- Stars (Billions): Bright nucleus, dusty spiral arms
- Dust Lanes: Prominent, obscuring star-forming regions
- Starburst Core: High rate of new star formation
More deep-sky objects: M77 (Cetus A) · M74 (Phantom Galaxy) · Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) · Triangulum Galaxy (M33) · Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) · Andromeda Galaxy (M31)