IC 346

IC 346

IC 346 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Eridanus about 91 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 52,000 ly, about 52% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 1,897 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0-a
91 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
52k ly
across
12.6
apparent magnitude
1,897 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 91 million ly from home, you are seeing IC 346 as it looked roughly 91 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
NGC 1383Lenticular1.6 million ly
apart
NGC 1359Spiral3.7 million ly
apart
IC 343Lenticular4.6 million ly
apart
NGC 1452Lenticular5.7 million ly
apart
NGC 1482Lenticular6.5 million ly
apart
IC 1953Spiral7.4 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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