NGC 4259

NGC 4259

NGC 4259 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Virgo about 115 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 35,000 ly, about 35% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 2,487 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0
115 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
35k ly
across
13.6
apparent magnitude
2,487 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 115 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4259 as it looked roughly 115 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 4264Lenticular2.2 million ly
apart
IC 782Lenticular2.4 million ly
apart
IC 3225Spiral4.8 million ly
apart
NGC 4378Spiral5.0 million ly
apart
IC 3148Barred spiral5.1 million ly
apart
NGC 4270Lenticular5.9 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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