IC 2040

IC 2040

IC 2040 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Eridanus about 62 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 24,000 ly, about 24% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 1,381 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0-a
62 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
24k ly
across
13.7
apparent magnitude
1,381 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 62 million ly from home, you are seeing IC 2040 as it looked roughly 62 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 1537Elliptical1.9 million ly
apart
IC 2006Elliptical6.2 million ly
apart
NGC 1532Barred spiral7.2 million ly
apart
NGC 1436Spiral7.5 million ly
apart
NGC 1460Lenticular8.1 million ly
apart
NGC 1427Elliptical8.5 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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