NGC 1277

NGC 1277

NGC 1277 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Perseus about 235 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 66,000 ly, about 66% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 4,982 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0-a
235 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
66k ly
across
13.5
apparent magnitude
4,982 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 235 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 1277 as it looked roughly 235 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 312Elliptical4.6 million ly
apart
NGC 1270Elliptical5.8 million ly
apart
IC 294Lenticular7.9 million ly
apart
NGC 1224Elliptical8.3 million ly
apart
IC 301Elliptical9.8 million ly
apart
Perseus ALenticular10 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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