NGC 546

NGC 546

NGC 546 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Sculptor about 306 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 120,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 6,563 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · SBb
306 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
120k ly
across
14.4
apparent magnitude
6,563 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 306 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 546 as it looked roughly 306 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 482Spiral16 million ly
apart
NGC 549Barred spiral20 million ly
apart
NGC 409Elliptical21 million ly
apart
NGC 415Barred spiral21 million ly
apart
NGC 544Elliptical26 million ly
apart
NGC 630Elliptical28 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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