NGC 1666

NGC 1666

NGC 1666 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Eridanus about 129 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 51,000 ly, about 51% of our Milky Way's width. The light reaching us tonight left it about 129 million years ago.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0-a
129 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
51k ly
across
12.7
apparent magnitude

Because its light is 129 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 1666 as it looked roughly 129 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 1681Barred spiral2.7 million ly
apart
NGC 1665Lenticular2.7 million ly
apart
NGC 1677Lenticular4.0 million ly
apart
IC 2095Spiral5.1 million ly
apart
IC 2098Spiral5.8 million ly
apart
NGC 1843Spiral18 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