NGC 4977

NGC 4977

NGC 4977 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major about 387 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 120,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 8,318 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · Sb
387 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
118k ly
across
14.5
apparent magnitude
8,318 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 387 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4977 as it looked roughly 387 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 4974Elliptical28 million ly
apart
NGC 4938Barred spiral29 million ly
apart
NGC 4967Elliptical30 million ly
apart
IC 852Elliptical30 million ly
apart
NGC 4973Elliptical31 million ly
apart
NGC 5201Barred spiral35 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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