IC 120

IC 120

IC 120 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Cetus about 219 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 59,000 ly, about 59% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 4,900 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0
219 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
59k ly
across
15.1
apparent magnitude
4,900 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 219 million ly from home, you are seeing IC 120 as it looked roughly 219 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 138Spiral7.5 million ly
apart
NGC 535Lenticular9.7 million ly
apart
NGC 565Spiral11 million ly
apart
NGC 558Elliptical12 million ly
apart
NGC 530Lenticular14 million ly
apart
IC 1694Elliptical16 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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