NGC 3940

NGC 3940

NGC 3940 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Leo about 301 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 110,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 6,461 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E
301 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
107k ly
across
12.8
apparent magnitude
6,461 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 301 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 3940 as it looked roughly 301 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 742Spiral2.7 million ly
apart
NGC 3943Barred spiral4.1 million ly
apart
IC 2968Lenticular6.8 million ly
apart
NGC 3937Elliptical9.8 million ly
apart
NGC 3946Lenticular10 million ly
apart
NGC 3947Barred spiral12 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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