NGC 4639

NGC 4639

NGC 4639 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo about 51 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 42,000 ly, about 42% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 898 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · Sbc
51 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
42k ly
across
11.6
apparent magnitude
898 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 51 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4639 as it looked roughly 51 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 3775Spiral1.6 million ly
apart
NGC 4660Elliptical1.9 million ly
apart
IC 3583Irregular2.0 million ly
apart
NGC 4620Lenticular2.1 million ly
apart
IC 3727Spiral2.1 million ly
apart
NGC 4654Spiral2.2 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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