NGC 4081

NGC 4081

NGC 4081 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major about 68 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 28,000 ly, about 28% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 1,338 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · Sa
68 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
28k ly
across
13.1
apparent magnitude
1,338 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 68 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4081 as it looked roughly 68 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 4205Barred spiral1.9 million ly
apart
NGC 4036Lenticular3.4 million ly
apart
NGC 4125Elliptical5.7 million ly
apart
NGC 3682Lenticular6.5 million ly
apart
NGC 3879Spiral6.8 million ly
apart
NGC 4391Elliptical7.1 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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