NGC 863

NGC 863

NGC 863 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Cetus about 364 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 130,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 8,061 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · Sa
364 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
135k ly
across
13.7
apparent magnitude
8,061 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 364 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 863 as it looked roughly 364 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 868Elliptical10 million ly
apart
NGC 850Lenticular17 million ly
apart
IC 205Spiral29 million ly
apart
IC 172Barred spiral38 million ly
apart
IC 233Barred spiral44 million ly
apart
NGC 768Barred spiral46 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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