NGC 163

NGC 163

NGC 163 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Cetus about 276 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 110,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. The light reaching us tonight left it about 276 million years ago.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E
276 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
115k ly
across
12.7
apparent magnitude

Because its light is 276 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 163 as it looked roughly 276 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 165Barred spiral1.4 million ly
apart
NGC 191Spiral9.8 million ly
apart
NGC 191ALenticular11 million ly
apart
IC 22Lenticular13 million ly
apart
NGC 155Lenticular13 million ly
apart
IC 50Elliptical13 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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