NGC 4281

NGC 4281

NGC 4281 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Virgo about 125 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 100,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 2,685 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0-a
125 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
104k ly
across
11.3
apparent magnitude
2,685 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 125 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4281 as it looked roughly 125 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 4257Spiral1.7 million ly
apart
NGC 4249Elliptical3.7 million ly
apart
NGC 4289Barred spiral4.7 million ly
apart
NGC 4276Spiral5.2 million ly
apart
NGC 4191Lenticular5.7 million ly
apart
NGC 4224Spiral6.4 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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