NGC 3263

NGC 3263

NGC 3263 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Vela about 142 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 320,000 ly, about 3.2 times the width of our Milky Way. The light reaching us tonight left it about 142 million years ago.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · SBc
142 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
323k ly
across
12.2
apparent magnitude

Because its light is 142 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 3263 as it looked roughly 142 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 3366Barred spiral6.5 million ly
apart
NGC 3262Lenticular7.8 million ly
apart
NGC 3256ABarred spiral10 million ly
apart
NGC 3278Spiral11 million ly
apart
NGC 3283Lenticular11 million ly
apart
NGC 3256Barred spiral11 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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