NGC 4579

M58 · NGC 4579

NGC 4579 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo about 79 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 110,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 1,627 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · Sb
79 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
114k ly
across
10.3
apparent magnitude
1,627 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 79 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4579 as it looked roughly 79 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 4606Barred spiral1.4 million ly
apart
IC 3711Elliptical2.3 million ly
apart
IC 3720Elliptical2.9 million ly
apart
IC 3437Elliptical3.0 million ly
apart
IC 3501Elliptical3.0 million ly
apart
NGC 4640Lenticular3.0 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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