3C 66A is a blazar located in the constellation Andromeda. The "distance" of a far away galaxy depends on the distance measurement used. With a redshift of 0.444, light from this active galaxy is estimated to have taken around 4.5 billion years to reach Earth. But as a result of the expansion of the Universe, the present (co-moving) distance to this galaxy is about 5.4 billion light-years (1647 Mpc). Even at this great distance this blazar has an apparent magnitude of about 15.5. Although 0.444 is used as the common redshift value, 0.3347 is a new strict lower limit "inferred through observing the far-UV absorption by the low-z IGM." 3C 66A underwent an optical outburst in 2007 August, as monitored by the Tuorla blazar monitoring program. The event was monitored by the Whole Earth Blazar Telescope project.
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This article is an automated import of the Wikipedia article "3C 66A", available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3C_66A . Text is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.