NGC 3071

NGC 3071

NGC 3071 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Leo about 299 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 57,000 ly, about 57% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 6,418 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0
299 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
57k ly
across
15.3
apparent magnitude
6,418 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 299 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 3071 as it looked roughly 299 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 3116Elliptical9.3 million ly
apart
IC 2540Elliptical11 million ly
apart
NGC 3106Lenticular12 million ly
apart
IC 2519Elliptical14 million ly
apart
NGC 3068Elliptical14 million ly
apart
IC 2542Barred spiral21 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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