NGC 4421

NGC 4421

NGC 4421 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices about 72 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 55,000 ly, about 55% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 1,692 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0-a
72 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
55k ly
across
11.4
apparent magnitude
1,692 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 72 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4421 as it looked roughly 72 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
IC 796Lenticular1.4 million ly
apart
NGC 4321Spiral1.7 million ly
apart
IC 3462Elliptical1.9 million ly
apart
NGC 4474Lenticular2.6 million ly
apart
NGC 4502Spiral3.6 million ly
apart
NGC 4486BElliptical3.9 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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