NGC 3156

NGC 3156

NGC 3156 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Sextans about 62 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 35,000 ly, about 35% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 1,118 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0
62 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
35k ly
across
12.3
apparent magnitude
1,118 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 62 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 3156 as it looked roughly 62 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 3165Spiral350,000 ly
apart
NGC 3166Lenticular450,000 ly
apart
NGC 3169Spiral3.8 million ly
apart
NGC 3044Barred spiral5.7 million ly
apart
IC 600Barred spiral7.9 million ly
apart
IC 549Irregular8.7 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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