NGC 962
NGC 962 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Aries about 216 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 92,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. The light reaching us tonight left it about 216 million years ago.
Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph
Because its light is 216 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 962 as it looked roughly 216 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.
apartIC 1815Lenticular17 million ly
apartNGC 931Barred spiral18 million ly
apartNGC 978BLenticular19 million ly
apartNGC 978AElliptical19 million ly
apartNGC 969Lenticular19 million ly
apart
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).