NGC 3561

NGC 3561

the Guitar is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major about 402 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 200,000 ly, about 2.0 times the width of our Milky Way. The light reaching us tonight left it about 402 million years ago.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0-a
402 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
200k ly
across
14.7
apparent magnitude

Because its light is 402 million ly from home, you are seeing the Guitar as it looked roughly 402 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 3554Elliptical3.8 million ly
apart
NGC 3515Barred spiral15 million ly
apart
NGC 3612Spiral22 million ly
apart
NGC 3493Barred spiral22 million ly
apart
NGC 3609Spiral30 million ly
apart
NGC 3653Lenticular38 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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