NGC 72

NGC 72

NGC 72 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Andromeda about 323 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 110,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 7,050 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · Sab
323 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
109k ly
across
13.6
apparent magnitude
7,050 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 323 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 72 as it looked roughly 323 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 72AElliptical5.3 million ly
apart
NGC 70Barred spiral9.6 million ly
apart
NGC 71Elliptical11 million ly
apart
NGC 74Barred spiral11 million ly
apart
NGC 69Elliptical12 million ly
apart
NGC 27Barred spiral12 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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