NGC 3809

NGC 3809

NGC 3809 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major about 160 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 57,000 ly, about 57% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 3,443 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0
160 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
57k ly
across
13.5
apparent magnitude
3,443 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 160 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 3809 as it looked roughly 160 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 3762Barred spiral5.4 million ly
apart
NGC 3835AElliptical6.7 million ly
apart
NGC 3740Barred spiral6.9 million ly
apart
NGC 3725Barred spiral8.5 million ly
apart
NGC 3958Spiral8.5 million ly
apart
NGC 3894Elliptical9.9 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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