NGC 4868

NGC 4868

NGC 4868 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici about 218 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 91,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 4,701 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · Sab
218 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
91k ly
across
12.9
apparent magnitude
4,701 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 218 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4868 as it looked roughly 218 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 4914Elliptical1.4 million ly
apart
NGC 4846Barred spiral7.8 million ly
apart
IC 3892Lenticular8.2 million ly
apart
IC 4189Spiral9.6 million ly
apart
NGC 4956Lenticular10 million ly
apart
NGC 4986Barred spiral12 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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