NGC 168

NGC 168

NGC 168 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Cetus about 180 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 69,000 ly, about 69% of our Milky Way's width. The light reaching us tonight left it about 180 million years ago.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0-a
180 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
69k ly
across
14.9
apparent magnitude

Because its light is 180 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 168 as it looked roughly 180 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 177Spiral1.2 million ly
apart
NGC 167Barred spiral2.9 million ly
apart
IC 1561Barred spiral6.4 million ly
apart
IC 1562Barred spiral6.4 million ly
apart
NGC 171Spiral8.7 million ly
apart
NGC 209Elliptical14 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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