NGC 3546
NGC 3546 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Crater about 208 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 120,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. The light reaching us tonight left it about 208 million years ago.
Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph
Because its light is 208 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 3546 as it looked roughly 208 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.
apartNGC 3479Barred spiral12 million ly
apartNGC 3469Spiral14 million ly
apartNGC 3421Barred spiral17 million ly
apartNGC 3422Lenticular17 million ly
apartIC 647Lenticular18 million ly
apart
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).