NGC 1549

NGC 1549

NGC 1549 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Dorado about 57 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 85,000 ly, about 85% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 1,214 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E
57 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
85k ly
across
9.8
apparent magnitude
1,214 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 57 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 1549 as it looked roughly 57 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 1553Lenticular960,000 ly
apart
NGC 1546Lenticular2.6 million ly
apart
NGC 1515Spiral3.2 million ly
apart
NGC 1543Lenticular3.3 million ly
apart
NGC 1536Barred spiral4.2 million ly
apart
NGC 1688Barred spiral6.0 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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