IC 87

IC 87

IC 87 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Cetus about 594 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 120,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 12,849 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · Sbc
594 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
119k ly
across
15.4
apparent magnitude
12,849 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 594 million ly from home, you are seeing IC 87 as it looked roughly 594 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 1629Galaxy24 million ly
apart
IC 83Galaxy32 million ly
apart
NGC 500Elliptical55 million ly
apart
NGC 445Lenticular61 million ly
apart
IC 145Barred spiral63 million ly
apart
NGC 462Galaxy68 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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