IC 856

IC 856

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · SBab
189 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
40k ly
across
15.2
apparent magnitude

Because its light is 189 million ly from home, you are seeing IC 856 as it looked roughly 189 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 860Barred spiral16 million ly
apart
IC 4215Spiral18 million ly
apart
NGC 5172Spiral18 million ly
apart
NGC 5190Barred spiral20 million ly
apart
NGC 4712Barred spiral28 million ly
apart
NGC 4865Elliptical37 million ly
apart
Worlds in the same direction on the sky

Source: structural data (position, morphology, brightness, redshift) from OpenNGC (CC BY-SA). Distance computed by gravityfinder from redshift via Hubble's law (H0 = 70 km/s/Mpc).

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