NGC 4522

NGC 4522

NGC 4522 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo about 108 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 110,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 2,332 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · Sc
108 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
110k ly
across
12.9
apparent magnitude
2,332 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 108 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4522 as it looked roughly 108 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 4578Lenticular2.3 million ly
apart
NGC 4470Spiral4.0 million ly
apart
Butterfly GalaxiesBarred spiral4.3 million ly
apart
Butterfly GalaxiesBarred spiral5.4 million ly
apart
IC 3732Irregular5.9 million ly
apart
NGC 4607Barred spiral6.3 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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