NGC 4540

NGC 4540

NGC 4540 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices about 58 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 37,000 ly, about 37% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 1,228 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · SABc
58 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
37k ly
across
12.3
apparent magnitude
1,228 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 58 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4540 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 3612Lenticular1.3 million ly
apart
NGC 4539Spiral2.7 million ly
apart
IC 3530Elliptical2.7 million ly
apart
IC 3344Elliptical2.9 million ly
apart
NGC 4350Lenticular2.9 million ly
apart
NGC 4459Lenticular3.1 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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