IC 881

IC 881

IC 881 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices about 325 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 140,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 6,947 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · SBa
325 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
144k ly
across
14.6
apparent magnitude
6,947 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 325 million ly from home, you are seeing IC 881 as it looked roughly 325 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 882Elliptical2.5 million ly
apart
IC 858Lenticular10 million ly
apart
IC 859Elliptical11 million ly
apart
NGC 5129Elliptical13 million ly
apart
IC 857Barred spiral14 million ly
apart
NGC 5180Lenticular18 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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