NGC 6438A

NGC 6438A

NGC 6438A is an irregular galaxy in the constellation Octans about 107 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 110,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 2,657 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Irregular
type · I
107 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
107k ly
across
12.6
apparent magnitude
2,657 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 107 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 6438A as it looked roughly 107 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 6438Lenticular12 million ly
apart
Polarissima AustralisSpiral12 million ly
apart
NGC 2573BIrregular14 million ly
apart
NGC 7095Barred spiral19 million ly
apart
NGC 6920Lenticular21 million ly
apart
IC 4545Spiral22 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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