NGC 4685

NGC 4685

NGC 4685 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices about 315 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 150,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 6,760 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E-S0
315 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
146k ly
across
13.6
apparent magnitude
6,760 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 315 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4685 as it looked roughly 315 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 3745Lenticular2.8 million ly
apart
IC 3715Barred spiral6.4 million ly
apart
IC 3784Barred spiral7.3 million ly
apart
IC 3721Spiral9.2 million ly
apart
IC 3696Elliptical11 million ly
apart
IC 3736Spiral12 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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