NGC 1691

NGC 1691

NGC 1691 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Orion about 215 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 96,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 4,590 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0-a
215 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
96k ly
across
13.1
apparent magnitude
4,590 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 215 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 1691 as it looked roughly 215 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 1762Spiral12 million ly
apart
NGC 1642Spiral15 million ly
apart
NGC 1713Elliptical16 million ly
apart
NGC 1709Lenticular16 million ly
apart
NGC 1819Lenticular19 million ly
apart
NGC 1654Barred spiral22 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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