NGC 4863

NGC 4863

NGC 4863 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Virgo about 204 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 110,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. The light reaching us tonight left it about 204 million years ago.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0-a
204 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
113k ly
across
14.9
apparent magnitude

Because its light is 204 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4863 as it looked roughly 204 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 4825Elliptical2.6 million ly
apart
IC 3834Barred spiral7.1 million ly
apart
IC 3827Spiral8.7 million ly
apart
NGC 4714Elliptical9.3 million ly
apart
IC 3822Spiral9.7 million ly
apart
NGC 4823Lenticular11 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