NGC 854

NGC 854

NGC 854 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Fornax about 289 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 170,000 ly, about 1.7 times the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 6,218 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · SBc
289 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
168k ly
across
13.8
apparent magnitude
6,218 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 289 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 854 as it looked roughly 289 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 824Barred spiral20 million ly
apart
IC 1762Barred spiral32 million ly
apart
IC 1719Lenticular39 million ly
apart
NGC 630Elliptical40 million ly
apart
IC 1769Barred spiral41 million ly
apart
NGC 626Spiral44 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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