NGC 6056

NGC 6056

NGC 6056 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Hercules about 550 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 160,000 ly, about 1.6 times the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 11,687 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0-a
550 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
157k ly
across
13.9
apparent magnitude
11,687 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 550 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 6056 as it looked roughly 550 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 1189Lenticular2.8 million ly
apart
IC 1194Lenticular5.3 million ly
apart
IC 1191 NED01Spiral8.2 million ly
apart
IC 1195Barred spiral9.9 million ly
apart
IC 1193Lenticular14 million ly
apart
NGC 6062Barred spiral18 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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