IC 311

IC 311

IC 311 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Perseus about 200 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 58,000 ly, about 58% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 4,255 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · Sb
200 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
58k ly
across
15.7
apparent magnitude
4,255 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 200 million ly from home, you are seeing IC 311 as it looked roughly 200 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 309Lenticular5.7 million ly
apart
NGC 1281Elliptical7.0 million ly
apart
IC 313Elliptical9.1 million ly
apart
NGC 1293Elliptical9.7 million ly
apart
NGC 1334Barred spiral11 million ly
apart
NGC 1164Spiral13 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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