IC 1459

IC 1459

IC 1459 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Grus about 84 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 110,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 1,691 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E
84 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
113k ly
across
10.5
apparent magnitude
1,691 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 84 million ly from home, you are seeing IC 1459 as it looked roughly 84 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
NGC 7421Barred spiral1.3 million ly
apart
IC 5271Barred spiral5.5 million ly
apart
NGC 7404Elliptical5.8 million ly
apart
NGC 7410Barred spiral7.5 million ly
apart
IC 5270Barred spiral7.7 million ly
apart
NGC 7412Barred spiral9.7 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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