NGC 4968

NGC 4968

NGC 4968 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Hydra about 139 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 92,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 2,988 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0
139 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
92k ly
across
14.8
apparent magnitude
2,988 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 139 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4968 as it looked roughly 139 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 4197Elliptical2.0 million ly
apart
IC 4180Lenticular2.1 million ly
apart
NGC 4993Elliptical3.0 million ly
apart
NGC 5022Barred spiral11 million ly
apart
NGC 4970Lenticular12 million ly
apart
NGC 5018Elliptical13 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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