NGC 1361
NGC 1361 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Eridanus about 245 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 88,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. The light reaching us tonight left it about 245 million years ago.
Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph
Because its light is 245 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 1361 as it looked roughly 245 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 1397Lenticular16 million ly
apartNGC 1285Barred spiral18 million ly
apartNGC 1303Lenticular18 million ly
apartNGC 1424Spiral21 million ly
apartNGC 1324Barred spiral22 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).