IC 1946

IC 1946

IC 1946 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Horologium about 542 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 140,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 11,464 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0-a
542 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
143k ly
across
14.4
apparent magnitude
11,464 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 542 million ly from home, you are seeing IC 1946 as it looked roughly 542 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 1958Spiral14 million ly
apart
IC 1936Spiral19 million ly
apart
IC 1947Spiral22 million ly
apart
IC 1950Spiral23 million ly
apart
NGC 1356Barred spiral24 million ly
apart
IC 1968Spiral24 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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