It is 212 million light-years (65 Mpc) from Earth and is interacting with the barred spiral galaxy NGC 6872.

[3] IC 4970 is located a few arcseconds away from the much larger barred spiral galaxy NGC 6872, and the two are known to be interacting with each other.

[4] An ultraviolet-to-infrared study by Eufrasio, et al. (2013), using data from GALEX, Spitzer, and other resources found that the interaction between the two galaxies appears to have triggered significant star formation in the northeastern arm of NGC 6872 beginning about 130 thousand light-years (40 kpc) from its nucleus.

[2] A bright ultraviolet source was discovered at the end of the northeastern arm, around 290 thousand light-years (90 kpc) from the nucleus, which may be a tidal dwarf galaxy formed out of the interaction between IC 4970 and NGC 6872.

[5] The bright ultraviolet nature of this cluster indicates that it contains stars less than 200 million years old, which roughly coincides with the timeframe of the collision.