NGC 668

NGC 668

NGC 668 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Andromeda about 210 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 73,000 ly, about 73% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 4,577 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · Sb
210 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
73k ly
across
13.1
apparent magnitude
4,577 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 210 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 668 as it looked roughly 210 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 705Lenticular4.8 million ly
apart
NGC 700Lenticular5.9 million ly
apart
NGC 669Spiral6.6 million ly
apart
NGC 714Lenticular9.6 million ly
apart
NGC 591Lenticular10 million ly
apart
NGC 587Spiral11 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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