NGC 4944

NGC 4944

NGC 4944 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices about 325 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 130,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 6,964 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · Sa
325 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
131k ly
across
12.9
apparent magnitude
6,964 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 325 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4944 as it looked roughly 325 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 4045Elliptical3.8 million ly
apart
IC 4030Lenticular4.7 million ly
apart
NGC 4926ALenticular4.9 million ly
apart
NGC 4957Elliptical5.5 million ly
apart
NGC 4966Spiral6.2 million ly
apart
NGC 4898AElliptical6.5 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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