NGC 3966

NGC 3966

NGC 3966 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major about 151 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 110,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 3,433 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0-a
151 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
109k ly
across
13.8
apparent magnitude
3,433 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 151 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 3966 as it looked roughly 151 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 3991 NED02Spiral1.1 million ly
apart
IC 2978Barred spiral1.3 million ly
apart
NGC 3991 NED01Irregular3.5 million ly
apart
NGC 3995Spiral3.6 million ly
apart
IC 2985Lenticular4.8 million ly
apart
IC 2973Barred spiral5.1 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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