IC 709

IC 709

IC 709 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major about 442 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 140,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 9,549 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E
442 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
135k ly
across
15.0
apparent magnitude
9,549 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 442 million ly from home, you are seeing IC 709 as it looked roughly 442 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 708Elliptical660,000 ly
apart
IC 711Elliptical1.7 million ly
apart
IC 712Elliptical23 million ly
apart
IC 687Elliptical32 million ly
apart
NGC 4187Elliptical51 million ly
apart
NGC 3846Barred spiral54 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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