NGC 6855

NGC 6855

NGC 6855 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Telescopium about 204 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 75,000 ly, about 75% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 4,331 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0-a
204 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
75k ly
across
13.8
apparent magnitude
4,331 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 204 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 6855 as it looked roughly 204 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 4950Barred spiral1.9 million ly
apart
NGC 6848Spiral2.3 million ly
apart
IC 4952Lenticular5.3 million ly
apart
IC 4919Spiral6.1 million ly
apart
NGC 6867Barred spiral6.6 million ly
apart
NGC 6862Barred spiral6.9 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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