NGC 613 resides in eastern Sculptor. 5.3 magnitude Pi Sculptoris shines 3.4 degrees to the south-southeast. Similarly bright Pi Fornacis resides about 6 degrees to the east. The sketch at left presents the view at 82X in my 10-inch Starfinder equatorial Newtonian. NGC 613 appears 3' by 2' in size with a pair of 9th magnitude GSC stars immediately to the north. This 10.0 magnitude spiral galaxy is oriented slightly northwest-to-southeast.

The above observation was made in November 1995 from a site in southern Wisconsin. Ten years later, I revisited NGC 613 with the 18-inch Obsession from a truly dark site in northern Arizona. Observing at 199X, This galaxy really starts to show his stuff. The bright central bar is the most obvious feature, running 5'.5 in length and punctuated by a stellar core region. The initial curl of the northern spiral arm is readily apparent. But the remainder of this arm and the southern arm are averted vision details. Both are challenging detections in the thick air 25° above the horizon. But they give the galaxy an overall width of 4'. The several knots in the southern arm appear to correspond to HII regions in long exposure photos and CCD images of this galaxy. The bright star 2'.4 northeast of the core is unidentified in MegaStar. The double star 7'.5 northwest of NGC 613 is identified as a single 9.8 magnitude object in the Henry Draper and other catalogs. Of the ten remaining stars peppering the field, the brightest is a mid-12th magnitude spark and the others range from 13th to 15th magnitude.