NGC 1721

NGC 1721

NGC 1721 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Eridanus about 208 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 96,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 4,569 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0
208 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
96k ly
across
13.8
apparent magnitude
4,569 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 208 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 1721 as it looked roughly 208 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 1797Barred spiral14 million ly
apart
NGC 1799Lenticular14 million ly
apart
NGC 1720Barred spiral17 million ly
apart
IC 2101Barred spiral20 million ly
apart
NGC 1667Spiral20 million ly
apart
NGC 1648Lenticular21 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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