NGC 3166

NGC 3166

NGC 3166 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Sextans about 62 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 81,000 ly, about 81% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 1,326 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0-a
62 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
81k ly
across
10.6
apparent magnitude
1,326 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 62 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 3166 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 3165Spiral200,000 ly
apart
NGC 3156Lenticular450,000 ly
apart
NGC 3169Spiral3.6 million ly
apart
NGC 3044Barred spiral6.0 million ly
apart
IC 600Barred spiral8.0 million ly
apart
IC 549Irregular8.9 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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