NGC 2503

NGC 2503

NGC 2503 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Cancer about 257 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 71,000 ly, about 71% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 5,442 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · Sbc
257 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
71k ly
across
14.8
apparent magnitude
5,442 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 257 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 2503 as it looked roughly 257 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
IC 2338Barred spiral25 million ly
apart
IC 2339Spiral25 million ly
apart
IC 492Barred spiral25 million ly
apart
IC 2290Spiral26 million ly
apart
IC 2219Spiral26 million ly
apart
IC 2217Spiral26 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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