NGC 768

NGC 768

NGC 768 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Cetus about 326 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 150,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 6,973 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · SBbc
326 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
148k ly
across
14.2
apparent magnitude
6,973 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 326 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 768 as it looked roughly 326 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
IC 1761Lenticular1,000,000 ly
apart
IC 1756Spiral14 million ly
apart
IC 194Barred spiral32 million ly
apart
IC 197Barred spiral35 million ly
apart
IC 218Barred spiral35 million ly
apart
NGC 831Spiral37 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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