IC 2540

IC 2540 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Leo Minor about 305 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 81,000 ly, about 81% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 6,534 km/s.

Because its light is 305 million ly from home, you are seeing IC 2540 as it looked roughly 305 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.

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).