NGC 3951

NGC 3951

NGC 3951 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Leo about 301 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 89,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 6,471 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · Sab
301 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
89k ly
across
13.6
apparent magnitude
6,471 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 301 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 3951 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
NGC 4003Lenticular7.0 million ly
apart
NGC 4002Spiral9.5 million ly
apart
NGC 3940Elliptical13 million ly
apart
IC 742Spiral14 million ly
apart
NGC 3943Barred spiral16 million ly
apart
IC 2968Lenticular16 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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