IC 1022
IC 1022 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo about 80 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 23,000 ly, about 23% of our Milky Way's width. The light reaching us tonight left it about 80 million years ago.
Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph
Because its light is 80 million ly from home, you are seeing IC 1022 as it looked roughly 80 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.
apartNGC 5636Lenticular2.8 million ly
apartNGC 5690Spiral3.6 million ly
apartNGC 5560Barred spiral3.8 million ly
apartNGC 5569Spiral4.3 million ly
apartNGC 5738Lenticular5.7 million ly
apart
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).