NGC 3642

NGC 3642

NGC 3642 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major about 74 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 92,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 1,623 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · Sbc
74 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
92k ly
across
12.2
apparent magnitude
1,623 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 74 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 3642 as it looked roughly 74 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 3619Lenticular1.9 million ly
apart
NGC 3543Barred spiral5.1 million ly
apart
NGC 3499Lenticular5.8 million ly
apart
NGC 3683Barred spiral7.2 million ly
apart
NGC 3610Elliptical8.6 million ly
apart
NGC 3846AIrregular9.7 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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