NGC 946

NGC 946

NGC 946 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Andromeda about 266 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 110,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 5,655 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0
266 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
110k ly
across
14.5
apparent magnitude
5,655 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 266 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 946 as it looked roughly 266 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 937Spiral1.3 million ly
apart
NGC 923Spiral2.9 million ly
apart
NGC 911Elliptical5.0 million ly
apart
NGC 980Lenticular8.4 million ly
apart
NGC 914Spiral8.7 million ly
apart
NGC 982Spiral8.7 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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