NGC 6691

NGC 6691

NGC 6691 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Draco about 274 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 120,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 5,858 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · Sbc
274 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
117k ly
across
12.9
apparent magnitude
5,858 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 274 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 6691 as it looked roughly 274 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
IC 1286Spiral22 million ly
apart
NGC 6532Spiral32 million ly
apart
NGC 6497Barred spiral38 million ly
apart
NGC 6566Elliptical38 million ly
apart
NGC 6562Elliptical41 million ly
apart
NGC 6493Spiral42 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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