NGC 3921

NGC 3921

NGC 3921 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major about 275 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 160,000 ly, about 1.6 times the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 5,942 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0-a
275 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
162k ly
across
12.5
apparent magnitude
5,942 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 275 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 3921 as it looked roughly 275 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 3916Barred spiral5.3 million ly
apart
NGC 3977Spiral6.0 million ly
apart
IC 2943Spiral11 million ly
apart
NGC 3759ABarred spiral12 million ly
apart
NGC 3737Lenticular12 million ly
apart
NGC 3824Barred spiral17 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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