NGC 2709

NGC 2709

NGC 2709 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Hydra about 89 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 20,000 ly, about 20% of our Milky Way's width. The light reaching us tonight left it about 89 million years ago.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0
89 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
20k ly
across
15.0
apparent magnitude

Because its light is 89 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 2709 as it looked roughly 89 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 2698Lenticular2.1 million ly
apart
NGC 2697Lenticular3.1 million ly
apart
NGC 2695Lenticular3.8 million ly
apart
NGC 2699Elliptical3.9 million ly
apart
NGC 2708Spiral4.1 million ly
apart
NGC 2706Barred spiral13 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).

← all galaxies