IC 4252
IC 4252 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Hydra about 632 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 370,000 ly, about 3.7 times the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 13,582 km/s.
Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph
Because its light is 632 million ly from home, you are seeing IC 4252 as it looked roughly 632 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 4273Lenticular38 million ly
apartIC 4259Barred spiral45 million ly
apartIC 4294Barred spiral51 million ly
apartIC 4279Barred spiral55 million ly
apartIC 4281Spiral63 million ly
apart
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).