NGC 7656

NGC 7656

NGC 7656 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Aquarius about 353 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 100,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 7,625 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0
353 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
100k ly
across
14.5
apparent magnitude
7,625 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 353 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 7656 as it looked roughly 353 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 5310Lenticular22 million ly
apart
NGC 7573Barred spiral30 million ly
apart
IC 5345Spiral37 million ly
apart
NGC 7759Lenticular39 million ly
apart
IC 5343Spiral40 million ly
apart
NGC 7754Spiral41 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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