NGC 1678

NGC 1678

NGC 1678 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Orion about 222 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 83,000 ly, about 83% of our Milky Way's width. The light reaching us tonight left it about 222 million years ago.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0
222 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
83k ly
across
14.3
apparent magnitude

Because its light is 222 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 1678 as it looked roughly 222 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 1670Lenticular8.0 million ly
apart
NGC 1685Lenticular9.9 million ly
apart
NGC 1709Lenticular11 million ly
apart
NGC 1654Barred spiral12 million ly
apart
NGC 1659Barred spiral13 million ly
apart
NGC 1645Lenticular13 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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