NGC 4031

NGC 4031

NGC 4031 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major about 365 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 71,000 ly, about 71% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 7,815 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · Sb
365 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
71k ly
across
14.8
apparent magnitude
7,815 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 365 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4031 as it looked roughly 365 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 3003Lenticular11 million ly
apart
NGC 4113Barred spiral12 million ly
apart
IC 3002Spiral20 million ly
apart
IC 3001Barred spiral21 million ly
apart
IC 2971Elliptical31 million ly
apart
IC 2961Lenticular32 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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