The sky around NGC 7213 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 7213 is a spiral galaxy (Sa) in Grus, 66 million light-years away
NGC 7213 (ESO 288-043, PGC 68165) is a spiral galaxy (Sa) in the constellation Grus, 66 million light-years away. It shines at magnitude 11.0 and spans 4.8′ × 3.9′ of sky, about 92,700 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 7213 is AM 2206-472 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 2206-472 is its position: right ascension 22h 06m and declination -47.2°. It ranks 29 by brightness among the 40 brightest objects in the list on this site.
Finding NGC 7213 from Alnair
NGC 7213 lies 16′ southeast of Alnair, the magnitude 1.7 star. That is within one binocular field.
NGC 7213 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 43°N, and never sets south of 43°S.
NGC 7213 is 66 million light-years away
The light seen from NGC 7213 tonight left it about 66 million years ago, long before modern humans existed. It ranks 152 of 422 by distance among the galaxies on Go Astronomy. Distance source: Hubble flow, v=1426 km/s, H0=70.
Objects within 6° of NGC 7213
No other Messier, Caldwell or Herschel 400 object lies within 6°.
