NGC 3073

NGC 3073

NGC 3073 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major about 55 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 19,000 ly, about 19% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 1,176 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E-S0
55 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
19k ly
across
13.4
apparent magnitude
1,176 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 55 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 3073 as it looked roughly 55 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 3079Barred spiral2.3 million ly
apart
NGC 3206Barred spiral3.2 million ly
apart
NGC 3220Barred spiral3.4 million ly
apart
NGC 3310Spiral9.5 million ly
apart
NGC 2742Spiral9.7 million ly
apart
NGC 2950Lenticular9.9 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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