NGC 3271

NGC 3271

NGC 3271 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Antlia about 175 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 150,000 ly, about 1.5 times the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 3,794 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0
175 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
153k ly
across
11.7
apparent magnitude
3,794 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 175 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 3271 as it looked roughly 175 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 3269Lenticular950,000 ly
apart
NGC 3267Lenticular1.4 million ly
apart
IC 2578Spiral6.6 million ly
apart
NGC 3302Lenticular14 million ly
apart
NGC 3249Spiral16 million ly
apart
IC 2588Spiral19 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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