NGC 557

NGC 557

NGC 557 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Cetus about 261 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 110,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 5,688 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0-a
261 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
110k ly
across
14.8
apparent magnitude
5,688 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 261 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 557 as it looked roughly 261 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 547Elliptical4.6 million ly
apart
NGC 570Spiral5.7 million ly
apart
NGC 560Lenticular6.1 million ly
apart
IC 126Galaxy6.4 million ly
apart
NGC 564Elliptical7.2 million ly
apart
NGC 541Elliptical8.4 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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