NGC 4647

NGC 4647

NGC 4647 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo about 66 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 53,000 ly, about 53% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 1,421 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · SABc
66 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
53k ly
across
11.6
apparent magnitude
1,421 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 66 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4647 as it looked roughly 66 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 3701Elliptical630,000 ly
apart
IC 3510Elliptical3.2 million ly
apart
NGC 4528Lenticular3.6 million ly
apart
NGC 4478Elliptical3.8 million ly
apart
NGC 4503Lenticular4.0 million ly
apart
IC 3806Spiral4.1 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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