NGC 3539

NGC 3539

NGC 3539 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major about 451 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 170,000 ly, about 1.7 times the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 9,735 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0-a
451 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
165k ly
across
15.2
apparent magnitude
9,735 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 451 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 3539 as it looked roughly 451 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 3553Barred spiral3.9 million ly
apart
NGC 3558Elliptical4.5 million ly
apart
NGC 3552Elliptical12 million ly
apart
NGC 3527Spiral13 million ly
apart
NGC 3563BLenticular22 million ly
apart
NGC 3574Elliptical25 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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