NGC 6708

NGC 6708

NGC 6708 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Telescopium about 120 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 41,000 ly, about 41% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 2,580 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · Sb
120 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
41k ly
across
12.9
apparent magnitude
2,580 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 120 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 6708 as it looked roughly 120 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 4797Elliptical4.2 million ly
apart
NGC 6707Barred spiral6.2 million ly
apart
IC 4821Spiral8.7 million ly
apart
IC 4837Barred spiral9.2 million ly
apart
IC 4839Barred spiral9.7 million ly
apart
IC 4782Spiral14 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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