NGC 6427

NGC 6427

NGC 6427 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Hercules about 151 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 68,000 ly, about 68% of our Milky Way's width. The light reaching us tonight left it about 151 million years ago.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E-S0
151 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
68k ly
across
14.5
apparent magnitude

Because its light is 151 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 6427 as it looked roughly 151 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 6417Barred spiral5.0 million ly
apart
NGC 6429Barred spiral5.3 million ly
apart
NGC 6484Barred spiral12 million ly
apart
NGC 6458Lenticular13 million ly
apart
NGC 6460Spiral14 million ly
apart
NGC 6490Elliptical20 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