NGC 6721

NGC 6721

NGC 6721 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Pavo about 205 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 110,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 4,421 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E
205 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
114k ly
across
12.0
apparent magnitude
4,421 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 205 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 6721 as it looked roughly 205 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 4806Barred spiral3.3 million ly
apart
IC 4814Barred spiral4.3 million ly
apart
IC 4830Barred spiral8.4 million ly
apart
IC 4851Barred spiral12 million ly
apart
IC 4836Barred spiral13 million ly
apart
IC 4827Spiral13 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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