NGC 3209

NGC 3209

NGC 3209 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Leo about 288 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 130,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 6,197 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E
288 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
131k ly
across
13.8
apparent magnitude
6,197 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 288 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 3209 as it looked roughly 288 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 3270Spiral13 million ly
apart
IC 2583Elliptical14 million ly
apart
IC 2572Spiral14 million ly
apart
NGC 3232Spiral14 million ly
apart
IC 2551Spiral15 million ly
apart
NGC 3234Elliptical17 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).

← all galaxies