NGC 4706

NGC 4706

NGC 4706 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Centaurus about 175 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 75,000 ly, about 75% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 3,715 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0
175 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
75k ly
across
12.9
apparent magnitude
3,715 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 175 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4706 as it looked roughly 175 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 4603ABarred spiral6.7 million ly
apart
NGC 4832Lenticular8.2 million ly
apart
NGC 4696CBarred spiral8.4 million ly
apart
NGC 4683Elliptical8.7 million ly
apart
NGC 4507Spiral13 million ly
apart
NGC 4499Barred spiral14 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).

← all galaxies