NGC 3

NGC 3

NGC 3 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Pisces about 182 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 54,000 ly, about 54% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 3,900 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0
182 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
54k ly
across
13.4
apparent magnitude
3,900 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 182 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 3 as it looked roughly 182 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 12Spiral12 million ly
apart
NGC 7785Elliptical12 million ly
apart
NGC 127Lenticular26 million ly
apart
IC 1508Spiral27 million ly
apart
NGC 126Lenticular29 million ly
apart
NGC 202Lenticular31 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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