IC 3012

IC 3012

IC 3012 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo about 453 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 78,000 ly, about 78% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 9,712 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · Sa
453 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
78k ly
across
15.9
apparent magnitude
9,712 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 453 million ly from home, you are seeing IC 3012 as it looked roughly 453 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 3037Barred spiral13 million ly
apart
IC 3043Spiral13 million ly
apart
IC 2991Spiral15 million ly
apart
NGC 4083Lenticular16 million ly
apart
IC 3174Spiral26 million ly
apart
IC 748Elliptical36 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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