NGC 2272

NGC 2272

NGC 2272 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Canis Major about 99 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 63,000 ly, about 63% of our Milky Way's width. The light reaching us tonight left it about 99 million years ago.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E-S0
99 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
63k ly
across
11.9
apparent magnitude

Because its light is 99 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 2272 as it looked roughly 99 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 2292Lenticular2.5 million ly
apart
NGC 2293Lenticular3.9 million ly
apart
NGC 2325Elliptical8.0 million ly
apart
NGC 2280Spiral10 million ly
apart
NGC 2227Spiral14 million ly
apart
NGC 2212Lenticular18 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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