NGC 1720

NGC 1720

NGC 1720 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Eridanus about 196 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 110,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 4,180 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · SBab
196 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
112k ly
across
13.0
apparent magnitude
4,180 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 196 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 1720 as it looked roughly 196 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 1726Lenticular6.4 million ly
apart
NGC 1741BSpiral12 million ly
apart
NGC 1741Spiral14 million ly
apart
NGC 1799Lenticular14 million ly
apart
NGC 1797Barred spiral15 million ly
apart
IC 399Irregular15 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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