NGC 4539

NGC 4539

NGC 4539 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices about 58 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 46,000 ly, about 46% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 1,287 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · Sa
58 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
46k ly
across
12.1
apparent magnitude
1,287 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 58 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4539 as it looked roughly 58 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 3530Elliptical1.6 million ly
apart
NGC 4540Spiral2.7 million ly
apart
NGC 4350Lenticular3.0 million ly
apart
IC 3612Lenticular3.7 million ly
apart
IC 783Lenticular4.2 million ly
apart
NGC 4344Lenticular4.7 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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