NGC 3861
NGC 3861 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Leo about 236 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 140,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 5,068 km/s.
Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph
Because its light is 236 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 3861 as it looked roughly 236 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.
apartNGC 3859Spiral19 million ly
apartNGC 4048Lenticular23 million ly
apartNGC 3860Spiral25 million ly
apartIC 746Barred spiral26 million ly
apartNGC 3993Barred spiral27 million ly
apart
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).