NGC 987

NGC 987

NGC 987 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Triangulum about 210 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 93,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 4,534 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0-a
210 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
93k ly
across
13.3
apparent magnitude
4,534 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 210 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 987 as it looked roughly 210 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 969Lenticular2.5 million ly
apart
NGC 974Spiral2.5 million ly
apart
NGC 978BLenticular2.6 million ly
apart
NGC 1067Spiral6.3 million ly
apart
NGC 1066Elliptical7.9 million ly
apart
IC 1815Lenticular10 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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