NGC 6368

NGC 6368

NGC 6368 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Ophiuchus about 129 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 130,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. The light reaching us tonight left it about 129 million years ago.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · Sb
129 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
129k ly
across
13.6
apparent magnitude

Because its light is 129 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 6368 as it looked roughly 129 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 6389Barred spiral20 million ly
apart
NGC 6430Spiral23 million ly
apart
NGC 6467Spiral23 million ly
apart
NGC 6501Lenticular24 million ly
apart
NGC 6500Spiral25 million ly
apart
NGC 6615Lenticular28 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).

← all galaxies