IC 121

IC 121

IC 121 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Cetus about 420 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 120,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 9,024 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · Sbc
420 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
122k ly
across
14.3
apparent magnitude
9,024 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 420 million ly from home, you are seeing IC 121 as it looked roughly 420 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 123Elliptical4.0 million ly
apart
IC 1697Lenticular26 million ly
apart
IC 103Elliptical27 million ly
apart
IC 109Lenticular34 million ly
apart
IC 105Lenticular35 million ly
apart
NGC 497Barred spiral49 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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