NGC 947

NGC 947

NGC 947 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Cetus about 232 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 140,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 5,012 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · SABc
232 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
145k ly
across
12.6
apparent magnitude
5,012 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 232 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 947 as it looked roughly 232 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 245Barred spiral27 million ly
apart
NGC 929Spiral29 million ly
apart
NGC 808Barred spiral29 million ly
apart
NGC 872Barred spiral33 million ly
apart
NGC 887Spiral33 million ly
apart
IC 230Lenticular33 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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