IC 3468

IC 3468

IC 3468 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Virgo about 61 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 23,000 ly, about 23% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 1,372 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E
61 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
23k ly
across
13.9
apparent magnitude
1,372 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 61 million ly from home, you are seeing IC 3468 as it looked roughly 61 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 3346Elliptical1.9 million ly
apart
IC 3361Elliptical1.9 million ly
apart
IC 3413Elliptical2.1 million ly
apart
NGC 4411Spiral2.2 million ly
apart
NGC 4464Elliptical2.7 million ly
apart
NGC 4411BSpiral2.7 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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