IC 3721

IC 3721

IC 3721 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices about 307 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 86,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 6,598 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · Sm
307 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
86k ly
across
13.7
apparent magnitude
6,598 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 307 million ly from home, you are seeing IC 3721 as it looked roughly 307 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 3784Barred spiral5.1 million ly
apart
IC 3696Elliptical6.8 million ly
apart
IC 3745Lenticular6.9 million ly
apart
IC 3715Barred spiral7.7 million ly
apart
NGC 4685Elliptical9.2 million ly
apart
IC 3655Spiral11 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