The sky around NGC 6923 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 6923 is a spiral galaxy (SBb) in Microscopium, 137 million light-years away
NGC 6923 (ESO 462-029, PGC 64884) is a spiral galaxy (SBb) in the constellation Microscopium, 137 million light-years away. It shines at magnitude 12.0 and spans 2.5′ × 1.2′ of sky, about 99,500 light-years across. It is a telescope object, 6 inches or larger, and it is highest in the evening sky in September.
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 6923 is AM 2028-310 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 2028-310 is its position: right ascension 20h 28m and declination -31.0°.
Finding NGC 6923 from Dabih
NGC 6923 lies 16.2° south of Dabih, the magnitude 3.0 star. A fist held at arm's length covers about 10°.
NGC 6923 is highest in the evening in September
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 59°N, and never sets south of 59°S.
NGC 6923 is 137 million light-years away
The light seen from NGC 6923 tonight left it about 137 million years ago, long before modern humans existed. It ranks 260 of 422 by distance among the galaxies on Go Astronomy. Distance source: Cosmicflows-4 (Tully et al. 2023).
Objects within 6° of NGC 6923
No other Messier, Caldwell or Herschel 400 object lies within 6°.
