NGC 3120

NGC 3120

NGC 3120 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Antlia about 131 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 64,000 ly, about 64% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 2,670 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · SABb
131 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
64k ly
across
12.8
apparent magnitude
2,670 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 131 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 3120 as it looked roughly 131 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
IC 2534Lenticular1.9 million ly
apart
IC 2532Spiral3.6 million ly
apart
IC 2536Barred spiral3.8 million ly
apart
NGC 3095Spiral6.9 million ly
apart
IC 2539Barred spiral7.0 million ly
apart
NGC 3157Barred spiral7.0 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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