NGC 644

NGC 644

NGC 644 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Phoenix about 290 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 110,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 11,900 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · SBc
290 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
110k ly
across
14.7
apparent magnitude
11,900 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 290 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 644 as it looked roughly 290 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 641Elliptical4.9 million ly
apart
NGC 630Elliptical19 million ly
apart
NGC 482Spiral26 million ly
apart
NGC 549Barred spiral27 million ly
apart
NGC 544Elliptical28 million ly
apart
NGC 626Spiral28 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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