NGC 6621

NGC 6621

NGC 6621 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Draco about 277 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 170,000 ly, about 1.7 times the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 6,210 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · Sb
277 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
173k ly
across
13.4
apparent magnitude
6,210 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 277 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 6621 as it looked roughly 277 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 6651Barred spiral18 million ly
apart
NGC 6622Spiral24 million ly
apart
NGC 6493Spiral35 million ly
apart
NGC 6491Spiral38 million ly
apart
NGC 6677Barred spiral41 million ly
apart
NGC 6679Elliptical44 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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