NGC 4640

NGC 4640

NGC 4640 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Virgo about 81 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 38,000 ly, about 38% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 2,105 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0-a
81 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
38k ly
across
14.2
apparent magnitude
2,105 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 81 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4640 as it looked roughly 81 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 3720Elliptical1.1 million ly
apart
NGC 4606Barred spiral1.8 million ly
apart
NGC 4584Spiral2.1 million ly
apart
IC 3586Lenticular2.2 million ly
apart
IC 3711Elliptical3.0 million ly
apart
NGC 4579Barred spiral3.0 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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