NGC 3685

NGC 3685

NGC 3685 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Leo about 401 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 87,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. The light reaching us tonight left it about 401 million years ago.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E
401 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
87k ly
across
15.5
apparent magnitude

Because its light is 401 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 3685 as it looked roughly 401 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 3601Barred spiral35 million ly
apart
IC 2871Spiral38 million ly
apart
IC 669Lenticular40 million ly
apart
IC 670Elliptical41 million ly
apart
IC 2741Barred spiral41 million ly
apart
IC 2742Spiral45 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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