IC 4660
IC 4660 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Minor about 59 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 22,000 ly, about 22% of our Milky Way's width. The light reaching us tonight left it about 59 million years ago.
Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph
Because its light is 59 million ly from home, you are seeing IC 4660 as it looked roughly 59 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 1254Barred spiral3.7 million ly
apartNGC 6340Lenticular4.1 million ly
apartIC 1251Spiral4.4 million ly
apartNGC 6538Barred spiral5.0 million ly
apartNGC 6236Spiral6.0 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).