NGC 3321

NGC 3321

NGC 3321 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Sextans about 116 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 78,000 ly, about 78% of our Milky Way's width. The light reaching us tonight left it about 116 million years ago.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · SABc
116 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
78k ly
across
13.7
apparent magnitude

Because its light is 116 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 3321 as it looked roughly 116 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 3375Lenticular6.3 million ly
apart
NGC 3481Spiral13 million ly
apart
NGC 3292Lenticular15 million ly
apart
IC 630Lenticular17 million ly
apart
NGC 3030Elliptical26 million ly
apart
NGC 3361Spiral26 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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