NGC 6487

NGC 6487

NGC 6487 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Hercules about 359 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 190,000 ly, about 1.9 times the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 7,699 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E
359 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
188k ly
across
12.0
apparent magnitude
7,699 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 359 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 6487 as it looked roughly 359 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 6486Elliptical17 million ly
apart
IC 1277Spiral36 million ly
apart
NGC 6575Elliptical43 million ly
apart
NGC 6433Barred spiral46 million ly
apart
NGC 6518Elliptical46 million ly
apart
NGC 6446Spiral53 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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