NGC 4989

NGC 4989

NGC 4989 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Virgo about 141 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 58,000 ly, about 58% of our Milky Way's width. The light reaching us tonight left it about 141 million years ago.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0
141 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
58k ly
across
14.3
apparent magnitude

Because its light is 141 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 4989 as it looked roughly 141 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 4915Elliptical5.2 million ly
apart
NGC 4890Spiral5.6 million ly
apart
Cocoon GalaxyLenticular5.8 million ly
apart
NGC 5015Spiral7.0 million ly
apart
NGC 4939Barred spiral13 million ly
apart
NGC 4671Elliptical15 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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