NGC 6486

NGC 6486

NGC 6486 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Hercules about 375 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 67,000 ly, about 67% of our Milky Way's width. The light reaching us tonight left it about 375 million years ago.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E
375 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
67k ly
across
15.0
apparent magnitude

Because its light is 375 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 6486 as it looked roughly 375 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 6487Elliptical17 million ly
apart
IC 1277Spiral50 million ly
apart
NGC 6433Barred spiral53 million ly
apart
NGC 6575Elliptical58 million ly
apart
NGC 6330Barred spiral62 million ly
apart
NGC 6518Elliptical62 million ly
apart
Worlds in the same direction on the sky

Source: structural data (position, morphology, brightness, redshift) from OpenNGC (CC BY-SA). Distance computed by gravityfinder from redshift via Hubble's law (H0 = 70 km/s/Mpc).

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