NGC 4681

NGC 4681

NGC 4681 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Centaurus about 153 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 62,000 ly, about 62% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 3,313 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · Sab
153 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
62k ly
across
13.4
apparent magnitude
3,313 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 153 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4681 as it looked roughly 153 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 4672Spiral4.6 million ly
apart
NGC 4729Elliptical6.6 million ly
apart
NGC 4645ALenticular7.3 million ly
apart
NGC 4744Lenticular7.8 million ly
apart
NGC 4812Lenticular8.2 million ly
apart
NGC 4677Lenticular8.4 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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