IC 4553

IC 4553 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Serpens about 257 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 83,000 ly, about 83% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 5,469 km/s.

Because its light is 257 million ly from home, you are seeing IC 4553 as it looked roughly 257 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.

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).