NGC 6869

NGC 6869

NGC 6869 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Draco about 127 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 53,000 ly, about 53% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 2,738 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0
127 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
53k ly
across
12.2
apparent magnitude
2,738 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 127 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 6869 as it looked roughly 127 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 6949Spiral8.6 million ly
apart
NGC 6911Barred spiral12 million ly
apart
NGC 6762Lenticular19 million ly
apart
NGC 6667Spiral20 million ly
apart
NGC 6916Barred spiral26 million ly
apart
NGC 6796Barred spiral30 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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