NGC 2486

NGC 2486

NGC 2486 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Gemini about 216 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 94,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 4,603 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · SBa
216 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
94k ly
across
13.5
apparent magnitude
4,603 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 216 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 2486 as it looked roughly 216 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 2498Spiral6.0 million ly
apart
IC 480Barred spiral8.0 million ly
apart
IC 481Barred spiral8.1 million ly
apart
NGC 2512Barred spiral8.3 million ly
apart
NGC 2487Barred spiral8.9 million ly
apart
IC 2205Elliptical12 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