NGC 3468

NGC 3468

NGC 3468 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major about 350 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 7,536 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0
350 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
153k ly
across
14.0
apparent magnitude
7,536 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 350 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 3468 as it looked roughly 350 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 3374Spiral18 million ly
apart
IC 2606Lenticular22 million ly
apart
IC 674Spiral22 million ly
apart
NGC 3334Lenticular32 million ly
apart
NGC 3569Lenticular38 million ly
apart
NGC 3614ASpiral38 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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