NGC 4159

NGC 4159

NGC 4159 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Draco about 82 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 32,000 ly, about 32% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 1,761 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · Scd
82 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
32k ly
across
14.2
apparent magnitude
1,761 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 82 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4159 as it looked roughly 82 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 4291Elliptical2.0 million ly
apart
NGC 4386Lenticular2.1 million ly
apart
NGC 3901Spiral3.8 million ly
apart
NGC 4127Spiral4.6 million ly
apart
NGC 4749Barred spiral7.5 million ly
apart
NGC 4750Spiral8.3 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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