NGC 4321

M100 · NGC 4321

NGC 4321 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices about 73 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 130,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 1,579 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · SABb
73 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
130k ly
across
9.5
apparent magnitude
1,579 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 73 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4321 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 4421Lenticular1.7 million ly
apart
IC 796Lenticular2.5 million ly
apart
IC 3462Elliptical2.9 million ly
apart
NGC 4502Spiral3.5 million ly
apart
NGC 4474Lenticular4.1 million ly
apart
NGC 4306Lenticular4.6 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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