NGC 1268

NGC 1268

NGC 1268 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Perseus about 150 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 42,000 ly, about 42% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 3,124 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · SABb
150 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
42k ly
across
14.8
apparent magnitude
3,124 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 150 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 1268 as it looked roughly 150 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 1264Barred spiral4.2 million ly
apart
IC 292Spiral12 million ly
apart
IC 316 NED02Spiral12 million ly
apart
IC 316 NED01Galaxy12 million ly
apart
NGC 1213Spiral14 million ly
apart
NGC 1171Spiral23 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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