NGC 641

NGC 641

NGC 641 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Phoenix about 294 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 160,000 ly, about 1.6 times the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 6,323 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E
294 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
156k ly
across
12.2
apparent magnitude
6,323 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 294 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 641 as it looked roughly 294 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 644Barred spiral4.9 million ly
apart
NGC 630Elliptical21 million ly
apart
NGC 482Spiral23 million ly
apart
NGC 549Barred spiral28 million ly
apart
NGC 546Barred spiral29 million ly
apart
NGC 544Elliptical30 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