NGC 4578

NGC 4578

NGC 4578 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Virgo about 106 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 77,000 ly, about 77% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 2,287 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0
106 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
77k ly
across
11.4
apparent magnitude
2,287 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 106 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4578 as it looked roughly 106 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 4522Spiral2.3 million ly
apart
Butterfly GalaxiesBarred spiral3.2 million ly
apart
IC 3732Irregular3.8 million ly
apart
Butterfly GalaxiesBarred spiral3.9 million ly
apart
NGC 4607Barred spiral4.6 million ly
apart
NGC 4470Spiral6.2 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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