NGC 850

NGC 850

NGC 850 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Cetus about 380 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 130,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 8,161 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0-a
380 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
135k ly
across
14.0
apparent magnitude
8,161 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 380 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 850 as it looked roughly 380 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 868Elliptical11 million ly
apart
IC 205Spiral12 million ly
apart
NGC 863Spiral17 million ly
apart
IC 172Barred spiral31 million ly
apart
IC 233Barred spiral46 million ly
apart
NGC 1072Spiral55 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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