IC 520

IC 520

IC 520 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Camelopardalis about 164 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 100,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 3,528 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · SABa
164 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
100k ly
across
11.8
apparent magnitude
3,528 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 164 million ly from home, you are seeing IC 520 as it looked roughly 164 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 511Lenticular3.2 million ly
apart
NGC 2614Spiral4.2 million ly
apart
NGC 2646Lenticular6.6 million ly
apart
NGC 2550ASpiral7.3 million ly
apart
NGC 2810Elliptical7.7 million ly
apart
NGC 2629Elliptical7.9 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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