IC 846

IC 846

IC 846 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices about 481 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 100,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 10,130 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E
481 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
102k ly
across
15.1
apparent magnitude
10,130 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 481 million ly from home, you are seeing IC 846 as it looked roughly 481 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 4172Barred spiral4.2 million ly
apart
IC 4081Elliptical13 million ly
apart
IC 3776Spiral36 million ly
apart
IC 4228Barred spiral39 million ly
apart
IC 4154Barred spiral44 million ly
apart
IC 4234Spiral48 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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