NGC 809

NGC 809

NGC 809 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Cetus about 249 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 80,000 ly, about 80% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 5,418 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0
249 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
80k ly
across
14.6
apparent magnitude
5,418 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 249 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 809 as it looked roughly 249 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 747Barred spiral8.1 million ly
apart
IC 184Barred spiral9.8 million ly
apart
IC 1767Spiral11 million ly
apart
NGC 713Barred spiral12 million ly
apart
NGC 726Barred spiral13 million ly
apart
NGC 707Elliptical14 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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