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Would anyone be able to reference the galaxy in the background of this image of the Ring Nebula:

enter image description here

It's obviously not a Messier object, I'm more confident in it being in the New General Catalogue.

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    $\begingroup$ It's IC 1296, see this photograph $\endgroup$
    – Andy
    Aug 30, 2016 at 13:15

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As Andy pointed out, the spiral galaxy is IC 1296. You're correct that it's not in the Messier Catalog, but it's obviously in the revised Index Catalogue. NED and SIMBAD have some more information on it:

  • Morphological type: SBbc, as classified according to the Hubble sequence. It's a spiral galaxy with two clearly visible arms.
  • Redshift: 0.017075 $\pm$ 0.000070, according to Marzke et al. (1996).
  • Distance: 66.6 Mpc to 68.9 Mpc after corrections, depending on your distance definition of choice (angular diameter, luminosity, etc.). Large uncertainties arise when calculating the difference from redshift. For comparison, Andromeda is approximately 0.78 Mpc away, and the Ring Nebula is $10^{-3}$ times that distance.
  • Apparent magnitude: 14.80 $\pm$ 0.30, at visible wavelengths. For comparison, the Ring Nebula's apparent magnitude is 8.8.
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