NGC 3386

NGC 3386

NGC 3386 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Sextans about 479 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 150,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. The light reaching us tonight left it about 479 million years ago.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E
479 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
148k ly
across
14.6
apparent magnitude

Because its light is 479 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 3386 as it looked roughly 479 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
IC 658Elliptical35 million ly
apart
NGC 3477Lenticular41 million ly
apart
NGC 3476Elliptical41 million ly
apart
NGC 3466Barred spiral46 million ly
apart
NGC 3490Elliptical48 million ly
apart
IC 664Elliptical53 million ly
apart
Worlds in the same direction on the sky

Source: structural data (position, morphology, brightness, redshift) from OpenNGC (CC BY-SA). Distance computed by gravityfinder from redshift via Hubble's law (H0 = 70 km/s/Mpc).

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