NGC 720

NGC 720

NGC 720 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Cetus about 75 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 99,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 1,716 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E
75 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
99k ly
across
10.1
apparent magnitude
1,716 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 75 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 720 as it looked roughly 75 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 814Lenticular6.2 million ly
apart
NGC 755Barred spiral6.4 million ly
apart
NGC 681Spiral8.2 million ly
apart
NGC 853Spiral9.0 million ly
apart
NGC 701Barred spiral12 million ly
apart
IC 223Irregular13 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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