The sky around AM 1315-263 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.
AM 1315-263 is an elliptical galaxy in Hydra, 80 million light-years away
AM 1315-263 (NGC 5061, PGC 46330, MCG-04-31-048) is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Hydra, 80 million light-years away. It shines at magnitude 10.3 and spans 3.5′ × 3′ of sky, about 81,200 light-years across. It is a telescope object, 6 inches or larger, and it is highest in the evening sky in May.
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.
AM 1315-263 is AM 1315-263 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 1315-263 is its position: right ascension 13h 15m and declination -26.3°.
Finding AM 1315-263 from Naga
AM 1315-263 lies 3.7° south of Naga, the magnitude 3.0 star. Three fingers held at arm's length cover about 5°.
AM 1315-263 is highest in the evening in May
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 63°N, and never sets south of 63°S.
AM 1315-263 is 80 million light-years away
The light seen from AM 1315-263 tonight left it about 80 million years ago, long before modern humans existed. It ranks 182 of 490 by distance among the Arp-Madore galaxies on Go Astronomy with a measured distance. Distance source: Cosmicflows-4 (Tully et al. 2023), SN Ia/Fundamental Plane.
