NGC 3720

NGC 3720

NGC 3720 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Leo about 277 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 86,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 5,958 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · Sab
277 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
86k ly
across
13.0
apparent magnitude
5,958 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 277 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 3720 as it looked roughly 277 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 3719Barred spiral240,000 ly
apart
NGC 3662Barred spiral20 million ly
apart
NGC 3849Lenticular20 million ly
apart
NGC 3907Elliptical24 million ly
apart
NGC 3907BBarred spiral24 million ly
apart
IC 716Barred spiral26 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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