NGC 6548

NGC 6548

NGC 6548 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Hercules about 102 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 78,000 ly, about 78% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 2,174 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0
102 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
78k ly
across
11.7
apparent magnitude
2,174 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 102 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 6548 as it looked roughly 102 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 6555Spiral2.9 million ly
apart
NGC 6574Spiral8.9 million ly
apart
NGC 6570Barred spiral9.7 million ly
apart
NGC 6509Spiral26 million ly
apart
NGC 6615Lenticular27 million ly
apart
NGC 6547Lenticular28 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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