NGC 3811

NGC 3811

NGC 3811 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major about 148 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 87,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 3,037 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · SBc
148 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
87k ly
across
12.3
apparent magnitude
3,037 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 148 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 3811 as it looked roughly 148 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 705Lenticular13 million ly
apart
NGC 4047Barred spiral16 million ly
apart
NGC 3656Spiral21 million ly
apart
NGC 3549Barred spiral23 million ly
apart
NGC 3415Lenticular25 million ly
apart
NGC 3416Spiral26 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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