The sky around AM 1428-431 at true scale, north up and east left, with stars to magnitude 8. The circles show the field of a low-power eyepiece and of 10×50 binoculars.
AM 1428-431 is a peculiar galaxy in Lupus, 92 million light-years away
AM 1428-431 (IC 4441, IC 4444, PGC 51905) is a peculiar galaxy in the constellation Lupus, 92 million light-years away. It shines at magnitude 11.8 and spans 1.7′ × 1.4′ of sky, about 45,300 light-years across. It is a telescope object, 6 inches or larger, and it is highest in the evening sky in June.
Galaxy: a system of billions of stars, gas and dust held together by gravity, far outside the Milky Way. Spiral galaxies have a disk with arms; elliptical galaxies are smooth, round or oval swarms of older stars.
AM 1428-431 is AM 1428-431 in the Arp-Madore catalog
Halton Arp and Barry Madore listed it in A Catalogue of Southern Peculiar Galaxies and Associations (1987), from their search of the UK Schmidt southern sky survey plates. The number 1428-431 is its position: right ascension 14h 28m and declination -43.1°.
Finding AM 1428-431 from η Cen
AM 1428-431 lies 1.4° southwest of η Cen, the magnitude 2.3 star. That is within one binocular field.
AM 1428-431 is highest in the evening in June
The chart gives its height above the horizon at 9 pm through the year, from 60°N to 40°S. It can be seen from the whole southern hemisphere and north to about 47°N, and never sets south of 47°S.
AM 1428-431 is 92 million light-years away
The light seen from AM 1428-431 tonight left it about 92 million years ago, long before modern humans existed. It ranks 213 of 490 by distance among the Arp-Madore galaxies on Go Astronomy with a measured distance. Distance source: Hubble flow, z=0.00657 (Stellarium), comoving, H0=70.
