NGC 4303

M61 · NGC 4303

NGC 4303 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo about 73 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 150,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 1,607 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · Sbc
73 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
146k ly
across
10.3
apparent magnitude
1,607 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 73 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4303 as it looked roughly 73 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 4266Barred spiral2.0 million ly
apart
IC 3229Barred spiral3.4 million ly
apart
NGC 4527Spiral4.6 million ly
apart
NGC 4324Lenticular4.7 million ly
apart
IC 3474Spiral5.2 million ly
apart
NGC 4430Barred spiral5.3 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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