NGC 1218

NGC 1218

NGC 1218 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Cetus about 419 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 160,000 ly, about 1.6 times the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 8,644 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0-a
419 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
165k ly
across
13.2
apparent magnitude
8,644 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 419 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 1218 as it looked roughly 419 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 315Lenticular21 million ly
apart
IC 298AGalaxy29 million ly
apart
IC 298BBarred spiral29 million ly
apart
IC 322Galaxy34 million ly
apart
IC 1918Barred spiral36 million ly
apart
NGC 1149Elliptical39 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).

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