IC 985

IC 985

IC 985 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo about 414 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 90,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. The light reaching us tonight left it about 414 million years ago.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · Sa
414 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
90k ly
across
14.6
apparent magnitude

Because its light is 414 million ly from home, you are seeing IC 985 as it looked roughly 414 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 977Barred spiral8.3 million ly
apart
IC 981Galaxy16 million ly
apart
NGC 5366Lenticular35 million ly
apart
NGC 5442Barred spiral49 million ly
apart
NGC 5680Elliptical49 million ly
apart
IC 969Lenticular54 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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