NGC 3681

NGC 3681

NGC 3681 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Leo about 58 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 29,000 ly, about 29% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 1,299 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · Sbc
58 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
29k ly
across
11.9
apparent magnitude
1,299 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 58 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 3681 as it looked roughly 58 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 3659Spiral2.3 million ly
apart
NGC 3608Elliptical3.6 million ly
apart
NGC 3684Barred spiral3.7 million ly
apart
NGC 3592Spiral3.9 million ly
apart
NGC 3686Barred spiral4.0 million ly
apart
NGC 3596Spiral4.1 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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