The sky around NGC 274/275 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 274/275 is a galaxy pair (E-S0) in Cetus, 69 million light-years away
NGC 274/275 (NGC 274, PGC 2980, Arp 140, NGC 275, PGC 2984) is a galaxy pair (E-S0) in the constellation Cetus, 69 million light-years away. It shines at magnitude 13.4 and spans 1.3′ × 1.1′ of sky, about 26,200 light-years across. It is a telescope object, 6 inches or larger, and it is highest in the evening sky in November.
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 274/275 is Arp 140, one of Arp's material emanating from elliptical galaxies
Halton Arp photographed it for his Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies (1966) as field Arp 140. It is in his group of elliptical and elliptical-like, Arp 102 to 145, under the category Material emanating from elliptical galaxies. The field holds 2 galaxies.
NGC 274/275 lies 5.4° northwest of η Cet, the magnitude 3.5 star. Three fingers held at arm's length cover about 5°.
NGC 274/275 is highest in the evening in November
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 83°N.
NGC 274/275 is 69 million light-years away
The light seen from NGC 274/275 tonight left it about 69 million years ago, long before modern humans existed. It ranks 158 of 422 by distance among the galaxies on Go Astronomy. Distance source: Cosmicflows-4 (Tully et al. 2023), SBF/Fundamental Plane.
