NGC 4902

NGC 4902

NGC 4902 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo about 123 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 94,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 2,725 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · Sb
123 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
94k ly
across
11.3
apparent magnitude
2,725 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 123 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4902 as it looked roughly 123 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 4899Spiral1.6 million ly
apart
NGC 4887Lenticular2.7 million ly
apart
NGC 4897Barred spiral4.3 million ly
apart
NGC 5044Elliptical8.9 million ly
apart
NGC 5017Elliptical9.2 million ly
apart
NGC 5030Lenticular9.6 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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