NGC 3078

NGC 3078

NGC 3078 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Hydra about 116 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 100,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 2,495 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E
116 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
103k ly
across
11.2
apparent magnitude
2,495 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 116 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 3078 as it looked roughly 116 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 3084Spiral520,000 ly
apart
NGC 3051Elliptical3.6 million ly
apart
NGC 3054Barred spiral3.7 million ly
apart
IC 2531Spiral5.6 million ly
apart
NGC 3173Spiral7.8 million ly
apart
NGC 3089Spiral7.9 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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