NGC 4720

NGC 4720

NGC 4720 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Virgo about 70 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 25,000 ly, about 25% of our Milky Way's width. The light reaching us tonight left it about 70 million years ago.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E-S0
70 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
25k ly
across
14.2
apparent magnitude

Because its light is 70 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4720 as it looked roughly 70 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 825Elliptical1.9 million ly
apart
NGC 4731Barred spiral2.8 million ly
apart
NGC 4684Lenticular3.6 million ly
apart
NGC 4678Spiral4.2 million ly
apart
NGC 4775Spiral4.4 million ly
apart
NGC 4813Lenticular4.5 million ly
apart
Worlds in the same direction on the sky

Source: structural data (position, morphology, brightness, redshift) from OpenNGC (CC BY-SA). Distance computed by gravityfinder from redshift via Hubble's law (H0 = 70 km/s/Mpc).

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