The sky around AM 559-234 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 559-234 is a late spiral galaxy in Lepus, 116 million light-years away
AM 559-234 (NGC 2139, IC 2154, PGC 18258) is a late spiral galaxy in the constellation Lepus, 116 million light-years away. It shines at magnitude 11.7 and spans 2.6′ × 1.9′ of sky, about 87,700 light-years across. It is a telescope object, 6 inches or larger, and it is highest in the evening sky in February.
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 559-234 is AM 559-234 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 559-234 is its position: right ascension 5h 59m and declination -23.4°.
Finding AM 559-234 from Sirius
AM 559-234 lies 12.4° southwest of Sirius, the magnitude -1.4 star. A fist held at arm's length covers about 10°.
AM 559-234 is highest in the evening in February
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 66°N, and never sets south of 66°S.
AM 559-234 is 116 million light-years away
The light seen from AM 559-234 tonight left it about 116 million years ago, long before modern humans existed. It ranks 267 of 490 by distance among the Arp-Madore galaxies on Go Astronomy with a measured distance. Distance source: Cosmicflows-4 (Tully et al. 2023), Tully-Fisher.
