NGC 1617

NGC 1617

NGC 1617 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Dorado about 50 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 76,000 ly, about 76% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 1,063 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · SBa
50 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
76k ly
across
10.4
apparent magnitude
1,063 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 50 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 1617 as it looked roughly 50 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 2032Irregular3.1 million ly
apart
NGC 1556Barred spiral5.4 million ly
apart
NGC 1543Lenticular6.3 million ly
apart
IC 2056Barred spiral6.3 million ly
apart
NGC 1515Spiral6.3 million ly
apart
NGC 1527Elliptical6.8 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).

← all galaxies