NGC 6240

NGC 6240

NGC 6240 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Ophiuchus about 340 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 220,000 ly, about 2.2 times the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 7,351 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0-a
340 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
217k ly
across
13.3
apparent magnitude
7,351 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 340 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 6240 as it looked roughly 340 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 6220Spiral23 million ly
apart
IC 1242Barred spiral33 million ly
apart
NGC 6296Spiral35 million ly
apart
NGC 6080 NED02Lenticular61 million ly
apart
NGC 6378Barred spiral64 million ly
apart
NGC 6224Elliptical87 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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