NGC 1620

NGC 1620

NGC 1620 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Eridanus about 164 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 170,000 ly, about 1.7 times the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 3,497 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · SABc
164 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
167k ly
across
12.1
apparent magnitude
3,497 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 164 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 1620 as it looked roughly 164 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 1586Barred spiral4.8 million ly
apart
NGC 1588Elliptical5.1 million ly
apart
NGC 1587Elliptical9.4 million ly
apart
NGC 1638Lenticular9.8 million ly
apart
NGC 1635Lenticular11 million ly
apart
NGC 1593Lenticular13 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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