NGC 3992

M109 · NGC 3992

NGC 3992 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major about 49 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 110,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 1,059 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · Sbc
49 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
115k ly
across
9.9
apparent magnitude
1,059 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 49 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 3992 as it looked roughly 49 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 3953Barred spiral1,000,000 ly
apart
NGC 3998Lenticular2.8 million ly
apart
NGC 3729Spiral3.3 million ly
apart
NGC 3982Spiral3.4 million ly
apart
NGC 4100Barred spiral3.7 million ly
apart
NGC 3718Spiral4.1 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).

← all galaxies