NGC 4859

NGC 4859

NGC 4859 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices about 333 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 150,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 7,052 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0-a
333 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
146k ly
across
13.6
apparent magnitude
7,052 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 333 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4859 as it looked roughly 333 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 837Spiral4.6 million ly
apart
NGC 4842BElliptical5.7 million ly
apart
IC 3900Lenticular5.8 million ly
apart
NGC 4821Elliptical6.1 million ly
apart
NGC 4874Elliptical6.7 million ly
apart
NGC 4872Elliptical6.7 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