The sky around NGC 7090 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 7090 is a spiral galaxy (Sc) in Indus, 30 million light-years away
NGC 7090 (ESO 188-012, PGC 67045) is a spiral galaxy (Sc) in the constellation Indus, 30 million light-years away. It shines at magnitude 10.9 and spans 8.2′ × 1.6′ of sky, about 71,600 light-years across. It is a telescope object, 6 inches or larger, and it is highest in the evening sky in October.
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 7090 is AM 2133-544 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 2133-544 is its position: right ascension 21h 33m and declination -54.4°.
Finding NGC 7090 from Alnair
NGC 7090 lies 9.1° southwest of Alnair, the magnitude 1.7 star. A fist held at arm's length covers about 10°.
NGC 7090 is highest in the evening in October
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 35°N, and never sets south of 35°S.
NGC 7090 is 30 million light-years away
The light seen from NGC 7090 tonight left it about 30 million years ago, long before modern humans existed. It ranks 70 of 422 by distance among the galaxies on Go Astronomy. Distance source: Cosmicflows-4 (Tully et al. 2023).
Objects within 6° of NGC 7090
No other Messier, Caldwell or Herschel 400 object lies within 6°.
