The sky around NGC 1187 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.
NGC 1187 is a spiral galaxy (Sc) in Eridanus, 70 million light-years away
NGC 1187 (ESO 480-023, PGC 11479) is a spiral galaxy (Sc) in the constellation Eridanus, 70 million light-years away. It shines at magnitude 10.9 and spans 4.1′ × 3′ of sky, about 82,900 light-years across. It is a telescope object, 6 inches or larger, and it is highest in the evening sky in December.
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.
NGC 1187 is AM 300-230 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 300-230 is its position: right ascension 3h 00m and declination -23.0°.
Finding NGC 1187 from Zaurak
NGC 1187 lies 16.1° southwest of Zaurak, the magnitude 3.0 star. A fist held at arm's length covers about 10°.
NGC 1187 is highest in the evening in December
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 67°N, and never sets south of 67°S.
NGC 1187 is 70 million light-years away
The light seen from NGC 1187 tonight left it about 70 million years ago, long before modern humans existed. It ranks 159 of 422 by distance among the galaxies on Go Astronomy. Distance source: Cosmicflows-4 (Tully et al. 2023), Tully-Fisher.
Objects within 6° of NGC 1187
No other Messier, Caldwell or Herschel 400 object lies within 6°.
