IC 497

IC 497 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Cancer about 196 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 44,000 ly, about 44% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 4,208 km/s.

Because its light is 196 million ly from home, you are seeing IC 497 as it looked roughly 196 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).