The sky around NGC 3175 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 3175 is a spiral galaxy (Sab) in Antlia, 55 million light-years away
NGC 3175 (ESO 436-003, PGC 29892) is a spiral galaxy (Sab) in the constellation Antlia, 55 million light-years away. It shines at magnitude 11.3 and spans 5.2′ × 1.9′ of sky, about 82,700 light-years across. It is a telescope object, 6 inches or larger, and it is highest in the evening sky in April.
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 3175 is AM 1012-283 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 1012-283 is its position: right ascension 10h 12m and declination -28.3°.
Finding NGC 3175 from ν Hya
NGC 3175 lies 15.0° southwest of ν Hya, the magnitude 3.1 star. A fist held at arm's length covers about 10°.
NGC 3175 is highest in the evening in April
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 61°N, and never sets south of 61°S.
NGC 3175 is 55 million light-years away
The light seen from NGC 3175 tonight left it about 55 million years ago, long before modern humans existed. It ranks 116 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 3175
No other Messier, Caldwell or Herschel 400 object lies within 6°.
