NGC 4246

NGC 4246

NGC 4246 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo about 173 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 110,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 3,807 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · Sc
173 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
108k ly
across
12.7
apparent magnitude
3,807 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 173 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4246 as it looked roughly 173 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 4247Spiral9.6 million ly
apart
NGC 4297Lenticular11 million ly
apart
NGC 4296Lenticular13 million ly
apart
IC 768Spiral22 million ly
apart
NGC 4334Spiral27 million ly
apart
NGC 4012Spiral28 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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