NGC 6221

NGC 6221

NGC 6221 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Ara about 70 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 99,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 1,350 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · Sc
70 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
99k ly
across
10.5
apparent magnitude
1,350 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 70 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 6221 as it looked roughly 70 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 6215Spiral2.5 million ly
apart
IC 4653Lenticular15 million ly
apart
NGC 6300Barred spiral19 million ly
apart
NGC 6673Elliptical23 million ly
apart
NGC 6684AIrregular27 million ly
apart
IC 4819Spiral28 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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