IC 3481

IC 3481

IC 3481 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Virgo about 340 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 86,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 7,086 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E-S0
340 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
86k ly
across
13.7
apparent magnitude
7,086 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 340 million ly from home, you are seeing IC 3481 as it looked roughly 340 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 3425Lenticular6.3 million ly
apart
IC 3467Spiral9.9 million ly
apart
IC 3608Barred spiral10 million ly
apart
IC 3670Barred spiral13 million ly
apart
NGC 4446Spiral16 million ly
apart
NGC 4447Lenticular17 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).

← all galaxies