NGC 3516

NGC 3516

NGC 3516 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major about 123 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 68,000 ly, about 68% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 2,624 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0
123 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
68k ly
across
12.1
apparent magnitude
2,624 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 123 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 3516 as it looked roughly 123 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 3364Spiral4.3 million ly
apart
NGC 3735Spiral7.2 million ly
apart
NGC 3348Elliptical9.5 million ly
apart
NGC 3147Barred spiral11 million ly
apart
NGC 3061Spiral15 million ly
apart
NGC 4108BSpiral16 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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