NGC 4517

NGC 4517

NGC 4517 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo about 53 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 140,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 1,185 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · Sc
53 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
139k ly
across
10.5
apparent magnitude
1,185 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 53 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4517 as it looked roughly 53 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 4629Spiral2.8 million ly
apart
NGC 4544Barred spiral2.9 million ly
apart
NGC 4592Spiral3.2 million ly
apart
NGC 4691Lenticular4.8 million ly
apart
NGC 4771Spiral4.9 million ly
apart
NGC 4546Elliptical5.4 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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