The sky around NGC 45 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 45 is an intermediate spiral galaxy (SABd) in Cetus, 21 million light-years away
NGC 45 (UGCA 4, ESO 473-001, PGC 930) is an intermediate spiral galaxy (SABd) in the constellation Cetus, 21 million light-years away. It shines at magnitude 10.4 and spans 6.2′ × 4.4′ of sky, about 38,100 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 45 is AM 011-232 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 011-232 is its position: right ascension 0h 11m and declination -23.2°.
Finding NGC 45 from Diphda
NGC 45 lies 8.6° southwest of Diphda, the magnitude 2.0 star. A fist held at arm's length covers about 10°.
NGC 45 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 67°N, and never sets south of 67°S.
NGC 45 is 21 million light-years away
The light seen from NGC 45 tonight left it about 21 million years ago, long before modern humans existed. It ranks 55 of 422 by distance among the galaxies on Go Astronomy. Distance source: Cosmicflows-4 (Tully et al. 2023).
Objects within 6° of NGC 45
No other Messier, Caldwell or Herschel 400 object lies within 6°.
