NGC 3697

NGC 3697

NGC 3697 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Leo about 295 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 180,000 ly, about 1.8 times the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 6,261 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · Sb
295 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
178k ly
across
13.1
apparent magnitude
6,261 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 295 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 3697 as it looked roughly 295 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
IC 701Spiral9.3 million ly
apart
NGC 3710Elliptical12 million ly
apart
IC 707Spiral15 million ly
apart
NGC 3805Elliptical18 million ly
apart
NGC 3837Elliptical19 million ly
apart
NGC 3841Elliptical19 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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