IC 2557

IC 2557 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Leo Minor about 302 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 53,000 ly, about 53% of our Milky Way's width. The light reaching us tonight left it about 302 million years ago.

Because its light is 302 million ly from home, you are seeing IC 2557 as it looked roughly 302 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). Distance computed by gravityfinder from redshift via Hubble's law (H0 = 70 km/s/Mpc).