NGC 4717

NGC 4717

NGC 4717 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo about 220 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 100,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 4,515 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · Sa
220 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
103k ly
across
14.1
apparent magnitude
4,515 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 220 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4717 as it looked roughly 220 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 4760Elliptical5.0 million ly
apart
NGC 4716Lenticular7.5 million ly
apart
NGC 4786Elliptical11 million ly
apart
NGC 4792Lenticular14 million ly
apart
NGC 4703Barred spiral14 million ly
apart
NGC 4780AGalaxy15 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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