NGC 1659

NGC 1659

NGC 1659 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Eridanus about 213 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 93,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 4,537 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · Sbc
213 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
93k ly
across
12.5
apparent magnitude
4,537 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 213 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 1659 as it looked roughly 213 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 1667Spiral6.0 million ly
apart
IC 2101Barred spiral7.2 million ly
apart
NGC 1670Lenticular8.3 million ly
apart
NGC 1685Lenticular8.9 million ly
apart
IC 387Spiral9.6 million ly
apart
NGC 1621Elliptical10 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).

← all galaxies