NGC 871

NGC 871

NGC 871 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Aries about 175 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 51,000 ly, about 51% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 3,717 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · SBc
175 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
51k ly
across
13.6
apparent magnitude
3,717 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 175 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 871 as it looked roughly 175 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 1791Lenticular6.3 million ly
apart
IC 1790Spiral6.7 million ly
apart
NGC 876Spiral9.3 million ly
apart
NGC 882Lenticular10 million ly
apart
IC 195Lenticular11 million ly
apart
IC 196Spiral11 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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