NGC 254

NGC 254

NGC 254 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Sculptor about 73 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 59,000 ly, about 59% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 1,612 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0-a
73 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
59k ly
across
11.7
apparent magnitude
1,612 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 73 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 254 as it looked roughly 73 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 289Barred spiral3.3 million ly
apart
IC 1555Spiral4.1 million ly
apart
NGC 134Spiral5.3 million ly
apart
NGC 150Barred spiral5.9 million ly
apart
NGC 148Lenticular6.7 million ly
apart
NGC 423Lenticular7.2 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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