NGC 6315

NGC 6315

NGC 6315 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Hercules about 313 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 69,000 ly, about 69% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 6,672 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · Sc
313 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
69k ly
across
13.3
apparent magnitude
6,672 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 313 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 6315 as it looked roughly 313 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 6314Spiral5.0 million ly
apart
NGC 6321Barred spiral29 million ly
apart
NGC 6371Lenticular29 million ly
apart
NGC 6364Lenticular37 million ly
apart
IC 1236Spiral39 million ly
apart
NGC 6347Barred spiral45 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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