NGC 7240

NGC 7240

NGC 7240 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Lacerta about 282 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 49,000 ly, about 49% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 5,984 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E-S0
282 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
49k ly
across
14.2
apparent magnitude
5,984 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 282 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 7240 as it looked roughly 282 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
IC 5180Elliptical9.5 million ly
apart
NGC 7263Lenticular10 million ly
apart
NGC 7276Elliptical11 million ly
apart
NGC 7274Elliptical12 million ly
apart
NGC 7242 NED01Elliptical16 million ly
apart
IC 5193Elliptical19 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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