NGC 4606

NGC 4606

NGC 4606 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo about 79 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 57,000 ly, about 57% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 1,653 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · SBa
79 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
57k ly
across
11.9
apparent magnitude
1,653 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 79 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4606 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 4579Barred spiral1.4 million ly
apart
IC 3720Elliptical1.5 million ly
apart
NGC 4640Lenticular1.8 million ly
apart
IC 3711Elliptical1.8 million ly
apart
IC 3586Lenticular2.7 million ly
apart
NGC 4584Spiral2.8 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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