NGC 4603A

NGC 4603A

NGC 4603A is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Centaurus about 173 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 92,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 3,568 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · SBc
173 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
92k ly
across
14.3
apparent magnitude
3,568 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 173 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4603A as it looked roughly 173 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 4706Lenticular6.7 million ly
apart
NGC 4507Spiral7.1 million ly
apart
NGC 4696CBarred spiral7.3 million ly
apart
NGC 4499Barred spiral7.5 million ly
apart
NGC 4683Elliptical7.8 million ly
apart
NGC 4832Lenticular11 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).

← all galaxies