IC 1137

IC 1137 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Serpens about 199 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 50,000 ly, about 50% of our Milky Way's width. The light reaching us tonight left it about 199 million years ago.

Because its light is 199 million ly from home, you are seeing IC 1137 as it looked roughly 199 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.

Source: structural data (position, morphology, brightness, redshift) from OpenNGC (CC BY-SA). Distance computed by gravityfinder from redshift via Hubble's law (H0 = 70 km/s/Mpc).