The sky around NGC 7314 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 7314 is a spiral galaxy (SABb) in Piscis Austrinus, 54 million light-years away
NGC 7314 (ESO 533-053, PGC 69253) is a spiral galaxy (SABb) in the constellation Piscis Austrinus, 54 million light-years away. It shines at magnitude 11.2 and spans 4.2′ × 1.7′ of sky, about 66,200 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 7314 is Arp 14, one of Arp's spiral galaxies with detached segments
Halton Arp photographed it for his Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies (1966) as field Arp 14. It is in his group of spiral galaxies, Arp 1 to 101, under the category Spiral galaxies with detached segments.
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 2233-261 is its position: right ascension 22h 33m and declination -26.1°.
Finding NGC 7314 from Fomalhaut
NGC 7314 lies 6.0° northwest of Fomalhaut, the magnitude 1.2 star. Three fingers held at arm's length cover about 5°.
NGC 7314 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 64°N, and never sets south of 64°S.
NGC 7314 is 54 million light-years away
The light seen from NGC 7314 tonight left it about 54 million years ago, long before modern humans existed. It ranks 112 of 422 by distance among the galaxies on Go Astronomy. Distance source: Cosmicflows-4 (Tully et al. 2023).
