IC 3959

IC 3959

IC 3959 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices about 328 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 67,000 ly, about 67% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 7,030 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E
328 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
67k ly
across
14.0
apparent magnitude
7,030 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 328 million ly from home, you are seeing IC 3959 as it looked roughly 328 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 4030Lenticular2.3 million ly
apart
NGC 4848Spiral2.9 million ly
apart
IC 4041Elliptical3.5 million ly
apart
IC 4045Elliptical4.0 million ly
apart
NGC 4807Elliptical5.5 million ly
apart
NGC 4821Elliptical5.9 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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