NGC 4950

NGC 4950

NGC 4950 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Centaurus about 130 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 35,000 ly, about 35% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 2,793 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0
130 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
35k ly
across
14.9
apparent magnitude
2,793 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 130 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4950 as it looked roughly 130 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 4743Lenticular10 million ly
apart
NGC 4696Elliptical11 million ly
apart
NGC 4930Barred spiral11 million ly
apart
NGC 4767ASpiral11 million ly
apart
NGC 4650Lenticular11 million ly
apart
NGC 4603DSpiral12 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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