NGC 4951

NGC 4951

NGC 4951 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo about 55 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 50,000 ly, about 50% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 1,132 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · SABc
55 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
50k ly
across
11.8
apparent magnitude
1,132 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 55 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4951 as it looked roughly 55 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 4948Barred spiral3.0 million ly
apart
NGC 4941Spiral3.4 million ly
apart
NGC 4697Elliptical4.3 million ly
apart
NGC 4691Lenticular5.5 million ly
apart
IC 3908Barred spiral5.7 million ly
apart
NGC 4784Lenticular6.2 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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