NGC 488

NGC 488

NGC 488 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Pisces about 106 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 160,000 ly, about 1.6 times the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 2,233 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · Sb
106 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
156k ly
across
10.3
apparent magnitude
2,233 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 106 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 488 as it looked roughly 106 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 490Barred spiral2.2 million ly
apart
NGC 520 NED02Spiral3.1 million ly
apart
NGC 485Barred spiral3.4 million ly
apart
NGC 520 NED01Spiral7.3 million ly
apart
NGC 532Spiral7.6 million ly
apart
NGC 509Lenticular7.8 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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