NGC 4565

NGC 4565

Needle Galaxy is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices about 59 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 290,000 ly, about 2.9 times the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 1,181 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · Sb
59 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
287k ly
across
10.9
apparent magnitude
1,181 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 59 million ly from home, you are seeing Needle Galaxy as it looked roughly 59 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 3571Irregular2.8 million ly
apart
NGC 4494Elliptical3.0 million ly
apart
NGC 4725Spiral4.1 million ly
apart
IC 3334Irregular4.2 million ly
apart
NGC 4562Barred spiral4.2 million ly
apart
IC 3227Lenticular4.6 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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