NGC 6870

NGC 6870

NGC 6870 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Telescopium about 128 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 95,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 2,736 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · SABa
128 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
95k ly
across
11.9
apparent magnitude
2,736 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 128 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 6870 as it looked roughly 128 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 4943Elliptical1.4 million ly
apart
NGC 6861Elliptical2.9 million ly
apart
NGC 6868Elliptical3.7 million ly
apart
NGC 6861BLenticular3.9 million ly
apart
NGC 6861CLenticular6.5 million ly
apart
NGC 6909Elliptical7.3 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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