NGC 4731

NGC 4731

NGC 4731 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo about 70 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 130,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 1,438 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · SBc
70 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
128k ly
across
11.4
apparent magnitude
1,438 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 70 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4731 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 825Elliptical2.2 million ly
apart
NGC 4813Lenticular2.6 million ly
apart
NGC 4720Elliptical2.8 million ly
apart
NGC 4775Spiral3.8 million ly
apart
NGC 4678Spiral4.1 million ly
apart
NGC 4699Spiral5.1 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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