NGC 3079

NGC 3079

NGC 3079 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major about 53 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 130,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 1,101 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · SBc
53 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
125k ly
across
10.7
apparent magnitude
1,101 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 53 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 3079 as it looked roughly 53 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 3073Elliptical2.3 million ly
apart
NGC 3206Barred spiral3.1 million ly
apart
NGC 3220Barred spiral4.2 million ly
apart
NGC 3310Spiral7.5 million ly
apart
NGC 3359Spiral9.8 million ly
apart
NGC 3631Spiral11 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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