NGC 66

NGC 66

NGC 66 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Cetus about 354 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 130,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 7,568 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · SBb
354 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
128k ly
across
14.1
apparent magnitude
7,568 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 354 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 66 as it looked roughly 354 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 65Elliptical12 million ly
apart
NGC 142Barred spiral27 million ly
apart
NGC 143Barred spiral27 million ly
apart
NGC 144Spiral31 million ly
apart
NGC 7807Barred spiral37 million ly
apart
NGC 7821Spiral45 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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