The sky around NGC 474 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 474 is a lenticular galaxy (S0) in Pisces, 103 million light-years away
NGC 474 (Arp 227, UGC 864, PGC 4801) is a lenticular galaxy (S0) in the constellation Pisces, 103 million light-years away. It shines at magnitude 11.5 and spans 2.6′ × 2.4′ of sky, about 79,400 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 474 is Arp 227, one of Arp's galaxies with concentric rings
Halton Arp photographed it for his Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies (1966) as field Arp 227. It is in his group of neither spiral nor elliptical, Arp 146 to 268, under the category Galaxies with concentric rings. The field holds 2 galaxies.
NGC 474 lies 11.6° north of θ Cet, the magnitude 3.6 star. A fist held at arm's length covers about 10°.
NGC 474 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 northern hemisphere and south to about 87°S.
NGC 474 is 103 million light-years away
The light seen from NGC 474 tonight left it about 103 million years ago, long before modern humans existed. It ranks 218 of 422 by distance among the galaxies on Go Astronomy. Distance source: Cosmicflows-4 (Tully et al. 2023).
