NGC 1253A

NGC 1253A

NGC 1253A is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Eridanus about 85 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 25,000 ly, about 25% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 1,831 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · SBm
85 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
25k ly
across
13.8
apparent magnitude
1,831 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 85 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 1253A as it looked roughly 85 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
NGC 1253Spiral5.2 million ly
apart
IC 1870Spiral14 million ly
apart
NGC 1266Lenticular16 million ly
apart
NGC 1087Spiral17 million ly
apart
IC 271Lenticular17 million ly
apart
NGC 1248Lenticular19 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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