NGC 179

NGC 179

NGC 179 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Cetus about 280 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 91,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 6,013 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E
280 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
91k ly
across
13.2
apparent magnitude
6,013 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 280 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 179 as it looked roughly 280 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 247BBarred spiral17 million ly
apart
NGC 247DBarred spiral19 million ly
apart
NGC 166Spiral21 million ly
apart
IC 23Elliptical27 million ly
apart
NGC 335Barred spiral29 million ly
apart
IC 56Spiral30 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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