NGC 493

NGC 493

NGC 493 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Cetus about 110 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 96,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 2,338 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · Sc
110 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
96k ly
across
12.5
apparent magnitude
2,338 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 110 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 493 as it looked roughly 110 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 474Lenticular5.9 million ly
apart
NGC 520 NED02Spiral6.3 million ly
apart
NGC 488Barred spiral8.9 million ly
apart
NGC 490Barred spiral10 million ly
apart
NGC 520 NED01Spiral12 million ly
apart
NGC 485Barred spiral12 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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