IC 4721

IC 4721

IC 4721 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Pavo about 103 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 160,000 ly, about 1.6 times the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 2,119 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · SBc
103 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
160k ly
across
11.8
apparent magnitude
2,119 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 103 million ly from home, you are seeing IC 4721 as it looked roughly 103 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
IC 4720Barred spiral5.0 million ly
apart
IC 4901Spiral19 million ly
apart
IC 4819Spiral19 million ly
apart
IC 4871Spiral19 million ly
apart
NGC 6708Barred spiral20 million ly
apart
NGC 6810Spiral21 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).

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