NGC 669

NGC 669

NGC 669 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Triangulum about 215 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 150,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 4,752 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · Sab
215 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
147k ly
across
12.3
apparent magnitude
4,752 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 215 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 669 as it looked roughly 215 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 700Lenticular4.7 million ly
apart
NGC 668Barred spiral6.6 million ly
apart
NGC 704BElliptical6.8 million ly
apart
NGC 705Lenticular7.5 million ly
apart
NGC 666Elliptical8.3 million ly
apart
NGC 759Elliptical8.9 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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