menu
A Complete Guide to the Solar System and the Night Sky
Home
Search Objects
Major Solar System Objects
Comets
Asteroids
Spacecrafts
Star Maps
Orbits
public  Greenwich, UK Greenwich, UK  ⓘ
Timezone: Europe/London
Sunrise: 5:05 
Transit: 12:56 
Sunset: 20:48
warning Set your observing location to get relevant data
wb_twilight   (Astronomical Twilight)  
Planets Visible Tonight
Planets Visible Tonight
 • 
What's Visible Now • Tonight Sky
Search  close

In Evidence

New Comet C/2025 J1 (Borisov) Discovered in May 2025
Detailed information about the discovery of Comet C/2025 J1 (Borisov) and pointers to useful resources to track and observe it. Read more...

Other deep sky objects in Andromeda
All Constellations »  Andromeda »  Deep Sky Objects » 

NGC 317A - Spiral Galaxy in Andromeda

Above the horizon.  Circumpolar today
Alt: 8.04°   Az: 18.59°   Direction: North-North-East

NGC 317A is a Spiral Galaxy in the Andromeda constellation. NGC 317A is situated north of the celestial equator and, as such, it is more easily visible from the northern hemisphere. Given its visual magnitude of 13.56, NGC 317A is visible with the help of a telescope having an aperture of 14 inches (350mm) or more.

The image below is a photograph of NGC 317A from the Digitized Sky Survey 2 (DSS2 - see the credits section) taken in the red channel. The area of sky represented in the image is 0.5000x0.5000 degrees (30.00x30.00 arcmins).

Image of NGC 317A - Spiral Galaxy in Andromeda star
/>
DSS2 image of NGC 317A in the Red band. The green region on the image is a representation of the major (1.21 arcmin) and minor (0.96 arcmin) axes of the object's apparent size.

Celestial Coordinates

Apparent

00h 59m 05s
+43° 56’ 15”
13h 43m 59s
14h 43m 04s

J2000

00h 57m 38s
+43° 48’ 02”

Finder Chart

The simplified sky charts below show the position of NGC 317A in the sky. The first chart has a field of view of 60° while the second one has a field of view of 10°.

loader
  Loading map...
Finder chart for NGC 317A - Spiral Galaxy in Andromeda.

loader
  Loading map...
Finder chart for NGC 317A - Spiral Galaxy in Andromeda.

Photometric Information

The following table lists the magnitude of NGC 317A in different bands of the electomagnetic spectrum (when available), from the B band (445nm wavelength, corresponding to the Blue color), to the V band ( 551nm wavelength, corresponding to Green/Yellow color), to the J, H, K bands (corresponding to 1220nm, 1630nm, 2190nm wavelengths respectively, which are colors not visible to the human eye).

14.22
13.56
11.31
9.99
9.96

For more information about photometry in astronomy, check the photometric system article on Wikipedia.

The surface brightess reported below is an indication of the brightness per unit of angular area of NGC 317A.

23.98 mag/arcsec2

Apparent Size

The following table reports NGC 317A apparent angular size. The green area displayed on top of the DSS2 image of NGC 317A is a visual representation of it.
1.21 arcmin
0.96 arcmin
7°

Morphological Classification

NGC 317A - Spiral Galaxy in Andromeda is classified as Spiral (SAa) according to the Hubble and de Vaucouleurs galaxy morphological classification. The diagram below shows a visual representation of the position of NGC 317A - Spiral Galaxy in Andromeda in the Hubble de Vaucouleurs sequence.

NGC 317A - Spiral Galaxy in Andromeda
Visualization of the morphological classification of NGC 317A - Spiral Galaxy in Andromeda, Spiral (SAa).
Credits for the background image: Antonio Ciccolella / M. De Leo / CC BY

Rise and Set Times

Location: Greenwich, UK
Latitude: 51° 28’ 47” N
Longitude: 0° 00’ 00” E
Timezone: Europe/London

NGC 317A - Spiral Galaxy in Andromeda is circumpolar and transits at 09:13 UTC (altitude: 82.5°)