NGC 4866

NGC 4866

NGC 4866 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Virgo about 92 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 160,000 ly, about 1.6 times the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 1,910 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0-a
92 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
155k ly
across
11.1
apparent magnitude
1,910 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 92 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4866 as it looked roughly 92 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 3735Elliptical7.2 million ly
apart
NGC 4641Lenticular7.4 million ly
apart
IC 3637Elliptical7.7 million ly
apart
NGC 4596Lenticular10 million ly
apart
IC 3633Elliptical10 million ly
apart
IC 3486Elliptical10 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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