NGC 6055

NGC 6055

NGC 6055 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Hercules about 494 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 98,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 11,279 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E
494 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
98k ly
across
14.6
apparent magnitude
11,279 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 494 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 6055 as it looked roughly 494 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 6039Elliptical5.5 million ly
apart
IC 1190Spiral6.0 million ly
apart
IC 1185Spiral7.5 million ly
apart
IC 1186Barred spiral8.5 million ly
apart
IC 1173Spiral10 million ly
apart
IC 1188ALenticular15 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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