NGC 3969

NGC 3969

NGC 3969 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Crater about 309 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 120,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 6,689 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0-a
309 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
119k ly
across
14.0
apparent magnitude
6,689 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 309 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 3969 as it looked roughly 309 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 3823Elliptical32 million ly
apart
IC 2856Spiral48 million ly
apart
IC 2889Spiral48 million ly
apart
NGC 3661Lenticular49 million ly
apart
NGC 3775Lenticular50 million ly
apart
IC 695Spiral52 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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