Antlia is a small, faint constellation located in the southern skies. Its name is an ancient Greek and Latin word for “the pump.” The constellation was originally named Antlia Pneumatica, to commemorate the invention of the air pump, which it represents.
Antlia was created and catalogued by the French astronomer Abbé Nicolas Louis de Lacaille in the 18th century. Lacaille introduced a total of 14 constellations to fill the void in the faint regions of the far southern sky. Lacaille’s constellations are mostly named after scientific instruments and there are no myths attached to them.
Notable deep sky objects in Antlia include the Antlia Dwarf Galaxy, the Antlia Cluster of galaxies, the spiral galaxies NGC 3244 and IC 2560, the unbarred spiral NGC 2997, and the interacting pair IC 2545.
Members of the Antlia Cluster include the massive elliptical galaxies NGC 3258 and NGC 3268, the elliptical galaxy NGC 3260, the lenticular galaxies NGC 3269 and NGC 3267, the spiral galaxy NGC 3281, and the barred spiral NGC 3271, the brightest spiral galaxy in the cluster.
Facts, location and map
Antlia is one of the smaller constellations. It is the 62nd largest constellation out of the 88 modern constellations, occupying an area of 239 square degrees. It is located in the second quadrant of the southern hemisphere (SQ2). The entire constellation can be seen from locations between the latitudes +45° and -90°, but it never appears high above the horizon for observers in the northern hemisphere. The neighboring constellations are Centaurus, Hydra, Pyxis, and Vela.
The constellation name Antlia is pronounced /ˈæntliə/. In English, the constellation is known as the Air Pump. The genitive form of Antlia, used in star names, is Antliae (pronunciation: /ˈæntliiː/). The three-letter abbreviation, adopted by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in 1922, is Ant.
Antlia does not have any stars brighter than magnitude 3.00. It contains two stars located within 10 parsecs (32.6 light years) of Earth.
The brightest star in Antlia is Alpha Antliae. The orange giant star shines at magnitude 4.25 from a distance of 366 light-years. The nearest star in Antlia is DENIS J1048−3956, an ultra-cool red dwarf located 13.2 light-years away.
Antlia has three stars with known planets: the yellow dwarf HD 92987, orange dwarf Macondo (HD 93083), and yellow-white dwarf WASP-66 (F4V).
There are no meteor showers associated with Antlia. The constellation does not contain any Messier objects.
Antlia contains one formally named star. The star name approved by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) is Macondo (HD 93083).
Antlia belongs to the Lacaille family of constellations, along with Caelum, Circinus, Fornax, Horologium, Mensa, Microscopium, Norma, Octans, Pictor, Reticulum, Sculptor, and Telescopium.
The best time of the year to see Antlia is during the month of April, when the constellation appears higher in the sky around 9 pm.
Antlia constellation map, by IAU and Sky&Telescope magazine (Roger Sinnott & Rick Fienberg) (CC BY 3.0)
Antlia story
Antlia does not have a myth associated with it. It was named after the air pump, Antlia pneumatica, an instrument invented by the French physicist Denis Papin. Papin is also famous for inventing the steam digester, which preceded the steam engine and the pressure cooker.
Antlia was created by the French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille to commemorate Papin’s invention. Lacaille spent several years studying the southern sky from the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa in the 1750s, The French astronomer and geodesist described the new constellation as la Machine Pneumatique (the Pneumatic Machine). In 1763, he Latinized the name to Antlia pneumatica when he depicted the constellation on his star chart.
As depicted by Lacaille, Antlia represents the single-cylinder pump that Papin used in his experiments in the 1670s.
The constellation Antlia was first catalogued in Lacaille’s Coelum Australe Stelliferum, published posthumously in 1763. The catalogue included almost 10,000 southern stars, 42 nebulous objects, and 14 new constellations. The constellations introduced by Lacaille are known as the Lacaille family.
The name Antlia pneumatica was shortened to Antlia at the suggestion of the English astronomer John Herschel in 1844. Herschel’s proposal was widely adopted and, when the International Astronomical Union defined the constellation boundaries in the early 20th century, Antlia became one of the modern 88 constellations.
Photo of the constellation Antlia with annotations from IAU and Sky & Telescope. Credit: E. Slawik/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/M. Zamani (CC BY 4.0)
Photo of the constellation Antlia produced by NOIRLab in collaboration with Eckhard Slawik, a German astrophotographer. Credit: E. Slawik/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/M. Zamani (CC BY 4.0)
Major stars in Antlia
Antlia does not have any bright stars. The constellation’s lucida, Alpha Antliae, is a fourth magnitude star. It shines at magnitude 4.25. Only three other Antlia stars are brighter than magnitude 5.0: the orange giants Epsilon Antliae (mag. 4.51) and Iota Antliae (mag. 4.60) and the white main sequence star Theta Antliae (mag. 4.79). The constellation’s three brightest stars are K-type giants.
Antlia contains a total of 42 stars visible to the unaided eye (brighter than or equal to magnitude 6.5). Seven stars have Bayer designations. Lacaille originally assigned nine Greek letter designations to Antlia stars, but Beta and Gamma Antliae were moved to the constellation Hydra when the constellation boundaries were formally defined in 1930.
α Antliae (Alpha Antliae)
Alpha Antliae (α Ant) is an orange giant star of the spectral type K4 III. It lies approximately 366 light-years away. With an apparent magnitude of 4.25, it is the brightest star in Antlia. The star is a challenging target from heavily light-polluted areas.
Alpha Antliae has a mass of 2.2 solar masses and a radius 41 times that of the Sun. With an effective temperature of 4,070 kelvin, it shines with 412 solar luminosities. It is receding from the Sun at 12 km/s.
The evolved star is believed to be on the asymptotic giant branch (AGB), an evolutionary stage characterized by an inert carbon core, a helium burning shell around the core, and another shell where hydrogen is being fused into helium. The star will eventually evolve into a Mira variable, a pulsating star that shows variations in brightness with an amplitude of more than one magnitude.
The brightness of Alpha Antliae was reported to vary from magnitude 4.22 to 4.29 by American astronomer Benjamin Gould in 1879, but the variability has not been confirmed.
ε Antliae (Epsilon Antliae)
Epsilon Antliae (ε Ant) is an orange K-type giant located 700 light years from Earth. With an apparent magnitude of 4.51, it is the second brightest star in Antlia.
Epsilon Antliae has the spectral type K3 IIIa and a surface temperature of 4,237 K. As it evolved from the main sequence, the star has expanded to a size of 56.3 solar radii. It is around 919 times more luminous than the Sun. Photometric data obtained with the Hipparcos satellite indicates that the star varies in brightness by 0.0034 magnitudes with a period of 11.07941 days.
ι Antliae (Iota Antliae)
Iota Antliae (ι Ant) is an orange giant of the spectral type K1 III. It shines at magnitude 4.60 from a distance of 208 light years. It is the third brightest star in Antlia.
Iota Antliae is believed to be a red clump giant on the horizontal branch (HB). Its main source of energy is helium fusion in the core. The star has 1.55 times the Sun’s mass and a radius 12.10 times that of the Sun. With an effective temperature of 4,892 K, it is 66.7 times more luminous than the Sun. The giant star is younger than the Sun, with an estimated age of 3.32 billion years.
θ Antliae (Theta Antliae)
Theta Antliae (θ Ant) is a binary star system located 340 light-years away. With a combined apparent magnitude of 4.79, it is the fourth brightest point of light in Antlia. Individually, the two components shine at magnitudes 5.30 and 6.18.
The double star consists of a main sequence star of the spectral type A8 Vm and a yellow giant with the stellar classification G7III. The two components are separated by only 0.110 arcseconds in the sky and have an orbital period of 18.266 years. Theta Antliae was discovered to be a binary star by South African astronomer W. S. Finsen in 1952.
The primary component, Theta Antliae A, has a mass of 1.8 solar masses while the companion, Theta Antliae B, has a mass 2.1 times that of the Sun. The stars are receding from the Sun with a heliocentric radial velocity of +24 km/s.
η Antliae (Eta Antliae)
Eta Antliae (η Ant) is a binary system located 108.5 light years away. With an apparent magnitude of 5.222, it is the fifth brightest point of light in the constellation. It is moving away from the Sun at 30 km/s.
The primary component in the Eta Antliae system is a yellow-white main sequence star of the spectral type F1 V. It has 1.55 times the Sun’s mass and a radius of 1.72 solar radii. The star is 6.6 times more luminous than the Sun and has an effective temperature of 7,132 K. It has an estimated age of 0.9 billion years.
U Antliae
U Antliae (U Ant) is a variable carbon star located approximately 900 light years away. It has the spectral class C-N3 and is classified as an irregular variable (type LB). The star’s brightness varies between magnitude 5.27 and 6.04.
U Antliae has a mass of 3.1 solar masses and a radius 169 times that of the Sun. With a surface temperature of 3,394 K, it is 4,500 times more luminous than the Sun. Most of the star’s energy output is in the infrared part of the spectrum.
U Antliae is currently on the asymptotic giant branch (AGB). It is experiencing strong mass loss and is enveloped in two thin shells of dust. The dust shells are believed to have been expelled 14,000 and 10,000 years ago. They are suspected to be the product of enhanced mass loss during thermal pulses.
The variability of U Antliae was discovered by Louisa Dennison Wells, one of the Women Astronomical Computers at the Harvard College Observatory, in 1901. American astronomer Annie Jump Cannon included the star in her Second Catalogue of Variable Stars of 1907.
This ALMA image reveals much finer structure in the U Antliae shell than has previously been possible. Around 2700 years ago, U Antliae went through a short period of rapid mass loss. During this period of only a few hundred years, the material making up the shell seen in the new ALMA data was ejected at high speed. Examination of this shell in further detail also shows some evidence of thin, wispy clouds known as filamentary substructures. Image credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/F. Kerschbaum (CC BY 4.0)
AG Antliae (HD 89353)
AG Antliae (AG Ant, HR 4049) is a metal-poor post-asymptotic-giant-branch star in a binary system located approximately 6,000 light-years away. The system’s brightness varies between magnitude 5.29 and 5.83 with a period of 429 days, making AG Antliae visible to the unaided eye in exceptionally good conditions. The star system is surrounded by a thick disk of material with a temperature of 1,200 K.
AG Antliae shows the spectrum of a hot blue supergiant of the spectral type B9.5Ib-II. However, it is in fact a low-mass post-AGB star undergoing intense mass loss in a very late stage of its life cycle. It has a metallicity more than 30,000 times lower than the Sun and emits an infrared excess, indicating the presence of a circumbinary disk.
Both components in the AG Antliae system have a mass of 0.56 solar masses. The primary component is much larger, with a radius of about 47 solar radii. It has an effective temperature of 7,500 K and is 6,300 times more luminous than the Sun.
The secondary star has a radius 60% that of the Sun and shines with 6% of the Sun’s luminosity with an effective temperature of 3,500 K.
δ Antliae (Delta Antliae)
Delta Antliae (δ Ant) is a binary star with a combined apparent magnitude of 5.55. It lies 470 light years away.
The brighter component in the system, Delta Antliae A, shines at magnitude 5.57. It is a hot blue main sequence star of the spectral type B9.5 V. It has a mass of 3.35 solar masses and a luminosity 200 times that of the Sun. The star has a surface temperature of 11,117 K and spins at 27 km/s. It is believed to be 214 million years old.
The fainter companion, Delta Antliae B, is a yellow-white main sequence star with the stellar classification F9 Ve. It has a mass between 1.22 and 1.31 times that of the Sun. With an effective temperature of 5,948 K, it shines with 2.58 solar luminosities.
The two components are separated by 11 arcseconds in the sky, corresponding to a physical distance of around 2,200 astronomical units (AU).
ζ Antliae (Zeta Antliae)
The Bayer designation Zeta Antliae is shared by two unrelated star systems. Zeta1 Antliae is a binary star system located approximately 340 light-years away, and Zeta2 Antliae is a white subgiant star located 370 light-years away.
The Zeta1 Antliae system consists of two white main sequence stars of the spectral types A0 V and A2 V. The stars are separated by 8.042 arcseconds in the sky and have a combined apparent magnitude of 5.76. Individually, the components shine at magnitudes 6.20 and 7.01.
Both components are much hotter and more massive than the Sun. Zeta1 Antliae A has 2.46 times the Sun’s mass and a radius of 2.26 solar radii. With an effective temperature of 9,641 K, it is 39.8 times more luminous than the Sun. The star is an exceptionally fast spinner, with a projected rotational velocity of 204 km/s.
Zeta1 Antliae B has a mass of 2.23 solar masses and a radius 1.74 times the Sun’s. It is 16.9 times more luminous than the Sun and has a surface temperature of 8,872 K. It spins at 50 km/s.
Zeta2 Antliae is a subgiant star with the spectral class A9 IV. It has a mass of 1.71 solar masses and a radius 4.22 times that of the Sun. With a surface temperature of 7,455 K, it has a luminosity 49.5 times the Sun’s. The star is moving away from us at 20 km/s.
Zeta Antliae, image credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2 (CC BY 4.0)
S Antliae
S Antliae (S Ant) is an eclipsing binary star located 261 light years away. The star system is classified as a W Ursae Majoris variable, a contact binary system that varies in brightness because the components eclipse each other as they orbit and because the visible area of the stars is always changing. The components transfer mass and are gravitationally distorted by one another. They will eventually merge into a single star.
S Antliae shows brightness variations from magnitude 6.27 to 6.83 with a period of 15.6 hours. The components have masses of 0.79 and 0.47 solar masses and are both slightly larger than the Sun. S Antliae A has a radius of 1.46 solar radii and S Antliae B, 1.13 solar radii. They have a combined spectrum of A9 V and surface temperatures of 7,800 and 7,340 K. The star system has an estimated age of 1.9 billion years.
T Antliae
T Antliae (T Ant) is a Classical Cepheid located approximately 11,000 light-years away. The star’s brightness varies from magnitude 8.86 to 9.76 with a period of 5.89820 days.
Cepheid variables are young stars that vary in brightness due to pulsations. As these stars pulsate, their radii, temperatures and spectral types change. Cepheids have a well-defined relationship between their pulsation period and luminosity and are commonly used as standard candles to measure distances to galactic and extragalactic objects.
T Antliae is a yellow supergiant star of the spectral type F6Iab-G5. It has a radius 52 times that of the Sun. The radius varies by 5.4 solar radii as the star pulsates. With an effective temperature of 5,286 K, the star is 1,889 times more luminous than the Sun. It has an estimated age of only 100 million years.
Macondo
HD 93083 is an orange dwarf or subgiant star with the spectral type K2IV-V. It shines at magnitude 8.30 from a distance of 92.91 light years. The star is smaller and less massive than the Sun. It has a mass of 0.806 solar masses and a radius of 0.844 solar radii. With a surface temperature of 5,030 K, it shines with 41% of the Sun’s luminosity.
The star has an orbiting exoplanet, discovered using the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) instrument on ESO’s 3.6-metre telescope at La Silla Observatory in Chile in 2005. HD 93083 b orbits in the host star’s habitable zone, at an orbital distance of 0.477 astronomical units (AU). The planet has a mass of at least 0.37 Jupiter masses (118 Earth masses) and takes 143.58 days to complete an orbit around the star.
HD 93083 was formally named Macondo during the International Astronomical Union’s (IAU) 2019 NameExoWorlds campaign. Macondo is the fictional village in the Colombian author Gabriel García Marquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967). The planet HD 93083 b was named Melquíades, after a character in the novel.
CE Antliae
CE Antliae (TWA 7) is a T Tauri star, a pre-main sequence star that is still in the process of contracting. It lies 111.2 light years away. The low-mass star has the spectral type M1. With an apparent magnitude of 10.91, it is invisible to the unaided eye. It was discovered in 1999.
CE Antliae is only 6.4 million years old. The young stellar object is a member of the TW Hydrae association, a group of young, low-mass stars and substellar objects with masses between 5 Jupiter masses and 2 solar masses. The stellar family is the youngest such association within 100 parsecs of the solar system.
CE Antliae is surrounded by a debris disk. It hosts a sub-Jovian planet, discovered with the MIRI instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in 2025. The candidate planet has a mass of 0.3 Jupiter masses (95.4 Earth masses) and a temperature of 320 K. It was directly imaged by the James Webb telescope but remains unconfirmed.
UX Antliae
UX Antliae (UX Ant) is a carbon-rich, hydrogen-deficient post-AGB star located approximately 81,539 light-years (25,000 parsecs) away. The evolved star has a mass 72.2% that of the Sun and a surface temperature of 7,000 K.
UX Antliae is classified as an R Coronae Borealis variable, an eruptive variable star that undergoes dimming due to the condensation of carbon to soot. The star’s brightness has been observed to vary between magnitude 11.85 and 18.0 over irregular periods.
Deep sky objects in Antlia
Antlia does not have any exceptionally bright deep sky objects included in the Messier, Caldwell and Herschel 400 catalogues. It contains mostly faint galaxies that are challenging targets for small telescopes.
The constellation is home to the Antlia Cluster, the third closest cluster of galaxies to the Local Group, and to the Antlia Supernova Remnant, one of the largest supernova remnants in the sky.
NGC 2997
NGC 2997 (ESO 434-35, PGC 27978) is an unbarred spiral galaxy located approximately 39.8 million light-years away. It has an apparent magnitude of 10.1. The grand design galaxy appears almost face-on and has an apparent size of 8.9 by 6.8 arcminutes. It is larger than the Milky Way, with a physical diameter of 120,000 years.
NGC 2997 has clearly defined spiral arms that extend around it. The two main spiral arms spiral into the galaxy’s centre and form a ring around the nucleus. The ring hosts regularly spaced hot spots that contain super star clusters.
The galaxy was discovered by the German-born British astronomer William Herschel on March 4, 1793. It is the brightest member in the NGC 2997 Group, a group of galaxies within the Local Supercluster.
NGC 2997 hosted two observed supernovae. SN 2003jg was classified as a type Ib/c supernova. It was discovered on October 24, 2003. The supernova SN 2008eh was detected in July 2008. It had an apparent magnitude of 15.
Broadband image of NGC 2997. Credit: Adam Block/ChileScope (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Antlia Dwarf
The Antlia Dwarf (PGC 29194) is a dwarf irregular or dwarf spheroidal galaxy located around 4.305 million light-years away. It has an apparent magnitude of 15.67 and an apparent size of 2 by 1.5 arcminutes. It is the smallest and nearest member of the Antlia-Sextans Group, a small group of galaxies located in the constellations Antlia, Sextans, Hydra, and Leo.
The Antlia Dwarf galaxy has a diameter of only 2,610 light-years. Astronomers believe that it had an encounter with the larger Magellanic-type spiral galaxy NGC 3109 in the constellation Hydra about 1 billion years ago.
The small galaxy has unusually large amounts of neutral atomic hydrogen, but no prominent H II regions. Currently, it does not actively form new stars.
The Antlia Dwarf was first noted by H. Corwin, Gérard de Vaucouleurs, and A. de Vaucouleurs in 1985 and confirmed to be a dwarf galaxy in 1997.
Antlia Dwarf (PGC 29194) by the Hubble Space Telescope, credit: ESA/NASA and Hubble (PD)
Antlia II
Antlia II is a small dwarf galaxy located only 405,000 light years away. The Milky Way’s satellite appears near Epsilon Antliae in the sky. It has the lowest surface brightness of any known galaxy and is about 100 times more diffuse than any ultra diffuse galaxy discovered to date.
The galaxy has an apparent size of 1.26 degrees. Even though it has a half-light radius of almost 3 kiloparsecs (9,780 light-years) – comparable to that of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), the galaxy has only 1/10,000th of the brightness of the LMC.
Antlia II is in the process of being tidally disrupted by our galaxy. It will eventually become a stellar stream, an association of stars orbiting the Milky Way that used to belong to a galaxy that was ripped apart and stretched out by the tidal forces of our galaxy.
Antlia II was discovered using the data obtained in the Gaia Data Release 2 (GDR2) all-sky astrometric survey in 2019.
Astronomers have discovered a large, extremely diffuse galaxy companion to the Milky Way. As big as the Large Magellanic Cloud but 10,000 times fainter, the galaxy has eluded us until now because of its faint, “ghostly” appearance and its hiding place behind the disk of the Milky Way. The discovery was made with the Gaia satellite and archival data from DECam on the CTIO Blanco telescope. Astronomers want to know: is this galaxy an oddball?…or one of many “ghostly” companions yet to be found? Credit: G. Torrealba/Academia Sinica, Taiwan; V. Belokurov/Cambridge, UK & CCA, New York, US; based on an image by S. Brunie/ESO (CC BY 4.0)
Antlia Cluster (Abell S0636)
The Antlia Cluster is a cluster of galaxies located approximately 132.7 million light-years away. It is the third closest galaxy cluster to the Local Group, after the Virgo Cluster and the Fornax Cluster. It lies within the larger Hydra-Centaurus Supercluster, which is part of the Laniakea Supercluster (the supercluster that also hosts the Local Group).
The Antlia Cluster contains around 234 galaxies. It does not have a single brightest cluster galaxy and is therefore classified as a Bautz-Morgan type III cluster. The two most prominent members of the cluster are the elliptical galaxies NGC 3258 and NGC 3268. NGC 3268 is the brightest galaxy in the northern subgroup, while NGC 3258 dominates the southern subgroup. Each galaxy contains several thousand globular clusters.
The Antlia Cluster is relatively dense and contains mostly early-type galaxies. Dwarf elliptical galaxies are the most common galaxy type in the cluster.
The Antlia Cluster (Abell S636) is a group of at least 230 galaxies located about 130 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Antlia (the Air Pump). It hosts a rich variety of galaxy types, including lenticular galaxies, irregular galaxies and ultra-compact dwarfs. The cluster is dominated by two massive elliptical galaxies — NGC 3268 (center) and NGC 3258 (lower right).This image was taken with the 570-megapixel Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera (DECam), mounted on the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, a Program of NSF NOIRLab. It captures only a portion of the 230 of galaxies that so far have been found to make up the Antlia Cluster. DECam’s ultra-deep view showcases the variety of galaxies within and beyond the cluster in incredible detail. Credit: Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA Image processing: R. Colombari & M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab) (CC BY 4.0)
NGC 3223
NGC 3223 is a spiral galaxy located approximately 109.5 light-years away. It has an apparent visual magnitude of 10.82 and an apparent size of 2.34 by 1.778 arcminutes. It is classified as a Seyfert type 2 galaxy and has an active galactic nucleus.
NGC 3223 was discovered by John Herschel on February 2, 1835. It is flocculent in appearance and does not have a central bar or an inner ring.
NGC 3223 is the brightest and largest member of the NGC 3223 Group, which also includes NGC 3268, NGC 3258, IC 2560, IC 2559, IC 2552, NGC 3224, NGC 3223, and NGC 3289.
NGC 3223, image credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2 (CC BY 4.0)
NGC 3268
NGC 3268 is an elliptical galaxy located 125.3 million light-years away. It has an apparent magnitude of 11.77 and an apparent size of 1.5 by 1.17 arcminutes. It was discovered by the British astronomer John Herschel on April 18, 1835.
NGC 3268 is the dominant galaxy of the northern subgroup of the Antlia Cluster. The galaxy is moving away from us with a recessional velocity of 2,800 km/s.
NGC 3268 (centre), credit: Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA Image processing: R. Colombari & M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab) (CC BY 4.0)
NGC 3258
NGC 3258 is an elliptical galaxy located at a distance of 124.3 million light years. It has an apparent visual magnitude of 11.72 and an angular size of 1.227 by 1.153 arcminutes. The galaxy was discovered by John Herschel on May 2, 1834.
NGC 3258 hosted a supernova, SN 2010hx, discovered on September 16, 2010. The supernova shone at magnitude 15.3 and was classified as a type Ia supernova, triggered by an accreting white dwarf in a binary system.
NGC 3258 (centre), credit: Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA Image processing: R. Colombari & M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab) (CC BY 4.0)
ESO 375-53
ESO 375-53 is a barred spiral galaxy located approximately 119.4 million light years away. It is also known as NGC 3258C. John Herschel discovered the galaxy on May 2, 1834.
ESO 375-53 has an apparent magnitude of 13.7 and an apparent size of 1.1 by 0.80 arcminutes.
Spiral Galaxy ESO 375-53, found within a larger image of the Antlia Cluster — a group of at least 230 galaxies located about 130 million light-years away. This image was taken with the 570-megapixel Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera (DECam), mounted on the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, a Program of NSF NOIRLab. Credit: Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA Image processing: R. Colombari & M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab) (CC BY 4.0)
Antlia Supernova Remnant
The Antlia Supernova Remnant is the largest known supernova remnant in the sky by apparent size. It is around three times larger than the Vela Supernova Remnant in the constellation Vela and over 40 times larger than the full Moon. It has an angular size of about 24 degrees. The progenitor star of the Antlia SNR went out as a supernova around 100,000 years ago.
The expanding cloud of gas was discovered in 2002. It lies at a distance of 196 to 1,109 light years (60 – 340 parsecs).
NGC 3269
NGC 3269 is a barred spiral or lenticular galaxy located approximately 103 million light-years away in the Antlia Cluster. It has an apparent magnitude of 12.26 and an apparent size of 2.45 by 0.8 arcminutes. It was discovered by John Herschel on May 1, 1834.
The galaxy has a diameter of 98,900 light-years. It has a grand design spiral pattern that is still visible. Astronomers have found that it is devoid of H I and shows no evidence of recent star formation.
NGC 3269 imaged by the Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera (DECam), mounted on the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Credit: Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA; Image processing: R. Colombari & M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab) (CC BY 4.0)
NGC 3267
NGC 3267 is a lenticular galaxy located 169.4 million light-years away. It has an apparent magnitude of 11.7 and an apparent size of 1.0 by 1.7 arcminutes. It appears 2.5 arcminutes west of NGC 3268. The galaxy was discovered by John Herschel on April 18, 1835.
NGC 3267, image credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2 (CC BY 4.0)
NGC 3271
NGC 3271 is a barred lenticular galaxy located 170.8 million light years away. With an apparent visual magnitude of 11.73, it is one of the brightest members of the Antlia Cluster. It was discovered by John Herschel on May 1, 1834.
The galaxy appears 15 arcminutes east-southeast of NGC 3268. It has an apparent size of 3.3 by 1.8 arcminutes.
NGC 3271, image credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2 (CC BY 4.0)
NGC 3260
NGC 3260 is an elliptical galaxy located 108 million light years away in the Antlia Cluster. It was discovered by John Herschel on May 2, 1834. It has an apparent magnitude of 12.67 and an angular size of 0.937 by 0.599 arcminutes.
IC 2560
IC 2560 is a spiral galaxy located 110 million light years away. It has an apparent magnitude of 13.31 and an apparent size of 2.79 by 1.060 arcminutes, corresponding to a physical diameter of 150,000 light-years.
IC 2560 is a type 2 Seyfert galaxy. It has an active galactic nucleus with a supermassive black hole. The galaxy hosted a supernova, SN 2020ejm, observed in March 2020. SN 2020ejm was classified as a type Ia supernova and shone at magnitude 16.
Lying over 110 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Antlia (The Air Pump) is the spiral galaxy IC 2560, shown here in an image from NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. At this distance it is a relatively nearby spiral galaxy, and is part of the Antlia cluster — a group of over 200 galaxies held together by gravity. This cluster is unusual; unlike most other galaxy clusters, it appears to have no dominant galaxy within it. In this image, it is easy to spot IC 2560’s spiral arms and barred structure. This spiral is what astronomers call a Seyfert-2 galaxy, a kind of spiral galaxy characterised by an exceptionally bright nucleus and very strong emission lines from certain elements — hydrogen, helium, nitrogen, and oxygen. The bright centre of the galaxy is thought to be caused by the ejection of huge amounts of super-hot gas from the region around a central black hole. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA; Acknowledgement: Nick Rose (CC BY 4.0)
IC 2545
IC 2545 is a pair of interacting galaxies located at a distance of 450 million light years from Earth. They appear as a single S-shaped galaxy. The merging galaxies have a visual magnitude of 14.27 and an apparent size of 0.6 x 0.4’ arcminutes. They were discovered by the American astronomer DeLisle Stewart on May 1, 1900.
IC 2545 is a beautiful, but deceptive object that appears to be a single S-shaped galaxy, but is actually a pair of merging galaxies. The two cores of the parent galaxies are still visible in the central region. Other telltale markers for the collision include two pronounced tidal arms of gas and stars flung out from the central region. The tidal arm curving upwards and clockwise in the image contains a number of blue star clusters. IC 2545 glows strongly in the infrared part of the spectrum – another sign that it is a pair of merging galaxies. Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration, and A. Evans (University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University) (PD)
NGC 3125
NGC 3125 is an irregular dwarf starburst galaxy located at a distance of about 38 million light years from Earth. It was discovered by John Herschel on March 30, 1835.
The galaxy has an apparent magnitude of 13.45 and an angular size of 1.1 by 0.7 arcminutes. It is a member of the LGG 189 Group, which also includes the spiral galaxies NGC 3137 and NGC 3175.
A 2006 study of two vast star-forming regions in the galaxy identified two young star clusters. The brighter one is a super star cluster with a total mass of 170,000 solar masses. It is believed to contain some of the most massive stars ever detected.
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image reveals the vibrant core of the galaxy NGC 3125. Discovered by John Herschel in 1835, NGC 3125 is a great example of a starburst galaxy — a galaxy in which unusually high numbers of new stars are forming, springing to life within intensely hot clouds of gas. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA; Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt (Geckzilla) (CC BY 4.0)
NGC 3244
NGC 3244 is a spiral galaxy located at a distance of 147.6 million light-years. It was discovered by John Herschel on April 22, 1835. It has an apparent magnitude of 12.89 and an apparent size of 2.0 by 1.5 arcminutes.
The galaxy hosted a supernova, SN 2010ev, discovered on June 27, 2010. SN 2010ev was classified as a type Ia supernova and peaked at magnitude 14.
image of the spiral galaxy NGC 3244 was taken with the help of the President of the Czech Republic, Václav Klaus, during his visit to ESO’s Paranal Observatory, on the night of 6 April 2011. The Czech Republic joined ESO in 2007, and this was the first visit of the country’s President to an ESO site. This galaxy has attracted considerable interest from astronomers thanks to the supernova event produced by one of its stars, which was discovered on 27 June 2010. This supernova , now known as Supernova 2010ev (SN 2010ev), is still visible as the — now faint — blue dot nestled within one of the thick spiral arms just to the left of the galaxy’s nucleus. To the right of the galaxy, an unremarkable foreground star in our own Milky Way, TYC 7713-527-1, shines brightly enough to catch our attention. Although the star seems a great deal brighter than SN 2010ev, this is actually an illusion created by the large difference in the distances of the two objects. The galaxy is much further away, at a distance of about 90 million light years, while the star lies thousands of times closer, within our own galaxy. At its brightest, SN 2010ev reached an apparent magnitude of about 14, making it about 1000 times dimmer than the unaided eye can see, but it was still the third brightest supernova observed in 2010. In fact, if the supernova had been as close to Earth as TYC 7713-527-1, it would have been easily visible to the unaided eye, unlike the aforementioned star. The image was taken using the FORS2 instrument on the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT). The filters used for the image were B, V and R, which were coloured blue, green and red respectively. A framed print of the President’s Galaxy has been presented to Václav Klaus, as a memento of his visit to Paranal. Credit: ESO (CC BY 4.0)
NGC 3302
NGC 3302 is an unbarred lenticular galaxy located 64.99 million light years away. It has an active galactic nucleus and is classified as a Seyfert 2 galaxy. With an apparent magnitude of 13.51 and an angular size of 0.997 by 0.658 arcminutes, it is a difficult target for amateur telescopes. The galaxy was discovered by John Herschel on January 28, 1835.
NGC 3302 with Legacy Surveys DR10, credit: Legacy Surveys / D. Lang (Perimeter Institute), NERSC, Meli Thev (CC BY-SA 4.0)
NGC 3087
NGC 3087 is an elliptical galaxy located 143.7 million light-years away. John Herschel discovered it on February 2, 1835. The galaxy is a member of the NGC 3038 Group, which also includes NGC 3038, NGC 3120, and IC 2532.
NGC 3087 has an apparent visual magnitude of 10.5 and an angular size of 2 by 2 arcminutes, corresponding to a diameter of 114,100 light-years. The galaxy hosted a supernova, SN 2023mdv, discovered on June 29, 2023. SN 2023mdv was classified as a type Ia supernova. It had an apparent magnitude of 18.3.
NGC 3087, image credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2 (CC BY 4.0)
NGC 3175
NGC 3175 is a weakly-barred spiral galaxy located approximately 53.9 million light-years away. It has an apparent magnitude of 12.08 and an apparent size of 5 by 1.3 arcminutes. John Herschel discovered it on March 30, 1835.
NGC 3175 is one of the most prominent members of the NGC 3175 Group, which also includes the slightly brighter and larger NGC 3137.
NGC 3175 is located around 50 million light-years away in the constellation of Antlia (the Air Pump). The galaxy can be seen slicing across the frame in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Its mix of bright patches of glowing gas, dark lanes of dust, bright core, and whirling, pinwheeling arms come together to paint a beautiful celestial scene. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Rosario et al. (CC BY 2.0)
NGC 3137
NGC 3137 is a spiral galaxy located approximately 52.6 million light-years away. It has an apparent visual magnitude of 11.5 and an apparent size of 6.3 by 2.2 arcminutes. It is a member of the NGC 3175 Group. The galaxy is around 138,000 light years across. It was discovered by John Herschel on February 5, 1837.
NGC 3137, image credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2 (CC BY 4.0)
IC 2531
IC 2531 is a spiral galaxy located at an approximate distance of 134.5 million light-years. The galaxy appears edge-on and has an angular size of 7.5 by 0.9 arcminutes. It is 283,000 light-years across. It is one of the most prominent members of the NGC 3054 Group, centered on the spiral galaxy NGC 3054 in the constellation Hydra.
IC 2531 was discovered by the American astronomer Lewis Swift on February 15, 1898. It has an apparent magnitude of 12.0. It appears similar to the Silver Sliver Galaxy (NGC 891) in the constellation Andromeda.
IC 2531, image created using the Aladin Sky Atlas software from the Strasbourg Astronomical Data Center and DSS (Digitized Sky Survey) data. DSS is one of the programs of STScI (Space Telescope Science Institute) whose files are in the public domain. Credit: Donald Pelletier (CC BY-SA 4.0)
NGC 3001
NGC 3001 is a spiral galaxy located 115 million light years away. It has an apparent magnitude of 11.83. It was discovered by John Herschel on March 30, 1835.
The galaxy has an apparent size of 4.3 by 3.1 arcminutes, corresponding to a physical diameter of around 145,000 light years. It hosted a type Ia supernova, SN 2010hg, discovered on September 1, 2010. The supernova shone at magnitude 15.
NGC 3001, credit: DSS, Donald Pelletier (CC0 1.0)
NGC 3281
NGC 3281 is an unbarred spiral galaxy located 144.7 million light-years away in the Antlia Cluster. It is classified as a type II Seyfert galaxy and a luminous infrared galaxy (LIRG).
The galaxy has an apparent magnitude of 12.6 and an apparent size of 2.040 by 0.898 arcminutes. It was discovered by John Herschel on May 2, 1834.
NGC 3281 with Legacy Surveys DR10, image credit: Legacy Surveys / D. Lang (Perimeter Institute), NERSC, Meli Thev (CC BY 4.0)
NGC 3273
NGC 3273 is a lenticular galaxy in the Antlia Cluster. It has an apparent magnitude of 12.5 and an apparent size of 1.29 by 0.645 arcminutes. The galaxy was discovered by John Herschel on May 3, 1834.
NGC 3273 (bottom centre), credit: Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA Image processing: R. Colombari & M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab) (CC BY 4.0)