IC 3957

IC 3957

IC 3957 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices about 296 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 48,000 ly, about 48% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 6,345 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E
296 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
48k ly
across
14.7
apparent magnitude
6,345 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 296 million ly from home, you are seeing IC 3957 as it looked roughly 296 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 4886Elliptical1.6 million ly
apart
IC 4042Lenticular2.2 million ly
apart
NGC 4889Elliptical4.2 million ly
apart
IC 4133Elliptical5.5 million ly
apart
NGC 4828Lenticular5.7 million ly
apart
NGC 4841BElliptical6.4 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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