NGC 6021

NGC 6021

NGC 6021 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Serpens about 218 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 98,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 4,738 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E
218 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
98k ly
across
13.0
apparent magnitude
4,738 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 218 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 6021 as it looked roughly 218 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
IC 1174Lenticular8.2 million ly
apart
NGC 6073Spiral12 million ly
apart
IC 1149Barred spiral15 million ly
apart
NGC 6030Lenticular15 million ly
apart
NGC 6028Lenticular16 million ly
apart
NGC 6027CBarred spiral19 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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