NGC 97
NGC 97 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Andromeda about 223 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 86,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 4,780 km/s.
Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph
Because its light is 223 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 97 as it looked roughly 223 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.
apartNGC 43Lenticular9.2 million ly
apartNGC 149Lenticular10 million ly
apartNGC 39Spiral10 million ly
apartNGC 19Barred spiral16 million ly
apartNGC 21Barred spiral17 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).