IC 3079

IC 3079

IC 3079 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Virgo about 374 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 77,000 ly, about 77% of our Milky Way's width. The light reaching us tonight left it about 374 million years ago.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0-a
374 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
77k ly
across
15.3
apparent magnitude

Because its light is 374 million ly from home, you are seeing IC 3079 as it looked roughly 374 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 3128BBarred spiral6.7 million ly
apart
IC 3159Barred spiral9.0 million ly
apart
IC 3149Lenticular9.7 million ly
apart
IC 3046Barred spiral10 million ly
apart
IC 3199Barred spiral12 million ly
apart
IC 3147 NED01Spiral13 million ly
apart
Worlds in the same direction on the sky

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).

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