NGC 217

NGC 217

NGC 217 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Cetus about 185 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 170,000 ly, about 1.7 times the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 4,001 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · SBa
185 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
172k ly
across
12.1
apparent magnitude
4,001 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 185 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 217 as it looked roughly 185 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 151Barred spiral11 million ly
apart
NGC 270Lenticular12 million ly
apart
IC 41Galaxy14 million ly
apart
NGC 207Spiral14 million ly
apart
NGC 187Barred spiral15 million ly
apart
NGC 277Elliptical19 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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