NGC 1079

NGC 1079

NGC 1079 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Fornax about 68 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 52,000 ly, about 52% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 2,252 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · SABa
68 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
52k ly
across
11.4
apparent magnitude
2,252 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 68 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 1079 as it looked roughly 68 million years ago. The photons left before that much of history had passed, and are only now reaching us. This distance is estimated from the galaxy's redshift, so the lookback time is approximate.

Nearest galaxies
IC 1826Lenticular3.2 million ly
apart
NGC 1097AElliptical5.7 million ly
apart
NGC 1187Spiral9.1 million ly
apart
NGC 1097Barred spiral9.2 million ly
apart
NGC 1292Spiral9.9 million ly
apart
IC 1913Barred spiral10 million ly
apart
Worlds in the same direction on the sky

Source: structural data (position, morphology, brightness, redshift) from OpenNGC (CC BY-SA). Recession velocity from RC3 (de Vaucouleurs et al. 1991, via NASA/HEASARC, public domain). Distance computed by gravityfinder from redshift via Hubble's law (H0 = 70 km/s/Mpc).

← all galaxies