IC 3998

IC 3998

IC 3998 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices about 439 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 71,000 ly, about 71% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 9,388 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0
439 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
71k ly
across
14.6
apparent magnitude
9,388 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 439 million ly from home, you are seeing IC 3998 as it looked roughly 439 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 4858Barred spiral1.7 million ly
apart
IC 4051Elliptical32 million ly
apart
IC 4154Barred spiral35 million ly
apart
IC 4044Lenticular40 million ly
apart
IC 3559Barred spiral41 million ly
apart
NGC 4895Lenticular42 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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