IC 4020
IC 4020 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici about 482 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 130,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. The light reaching us tonight left it about 482 million years ago.
Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph
Because its light is 482 million ly from home, you are seeing IC 4020 as it looked roughly 482 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.
apartIC 3987Elliptical4.1 million ly
apartIC 3916Spiral6.2 million ly
apartIC 4010Spiral6.6 million ly
apartIC 3919Elliptical8.9 million ly
apartIC 3956Elliptical11 million ly
apart
Source: structural data (position, morphology, brightness, redshift) from OpenNGC (CC BY-SA). Distance computed by gravityfinder from redshift via Hubble's law (H0 = 70 km/s/Mpc).