NGC 6478

NGC 6478

NGC 6478 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Draco about 318 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 130,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 6,857 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · Sc
318 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
134k ly
across
14.0
apparent magnitude
6,857 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 318 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 6478 as it looked roughly 318 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 6466Elliptical2.1 million ly
apart
NGC 6515Elliptical8.1 million ly
apart
NGC 6479Spiral18 million ly
apart
NGC 6386Barred spiral22 million ly
apart
NGC 6560Spiral30 million ly
apart
NGC 6409Barred spiral33 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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