NGC 4038

NGC 4038

Antennae Galaxies is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Corvus about 78 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 120,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 1,663 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · SBm
78 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
123k ly
across
10.2
apparent magnitude
1,663 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 78 million ly from home, you are seeing Antennae Galaxies as it looked roughly 78 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
NGC 4027Barred spiral1,000,000 ly
apart
NGC 4024Elliptical1.4 million ly
apart
Antennae GalaxiesBarred spiral1.7 million ly
apart
NGC 3957Lenticular2.8 million ly
apart
NGC 4027AIrregular3.4 million ly
apart
NGC 3956Barred spiral3.5 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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