NGC 3897

NGC 3897

NGC 3897 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major about 298 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 130,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 6,434 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · SBbc
298 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
132k ly
across
13.0
apparent magnitude
6,434 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 298 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 3897 as it looked roughly 298 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 2950Spiral21 million ly
apart
NGC 4097Lenticular21 million ly
apart
NGC 3891Barred spiral24 million ly
apart
IC 2967Elliptical28 million ly
apart
IC 3014Barred spiral28 million ly
apart
NGC 4148Lenticular29 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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