IC 4021

IC 4021

IC 4021 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices about 267 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 31,000 ly, about 31% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 5,727 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E
267 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
31k ly
across
14.7
apparent magnitude
5,727 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 267 million ly from home, you are seeing IC 4021 as it looked roughly 267 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 4907Barred spiral3.6 million ly
apart
IC 3947Lenticular4.1 million ly
apart
NGC 4873Lenticular4.4 million ly
apart
NGC 4943Lenticular6.1 million ly
apart
IC 3946Lenticular8.9 million ly
apart
NGC 4892Lenticular10 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