NGC 6902

NGC 6902

NGC 6902 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Sagittarius about 131 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 100,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 2,712 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · SBab
131 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
102k ly
across
11.5
apparent magnitude
2,712 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 131 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 6902 as it looked roughly 131 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 4946Lenticular5.0 million ly
apart
NGC 6902BSpiral7.8 million ly
apart
NGC 6909Elliptical8.8 million ly
apart
NGC 6870Spiral12 million ly
apart
NGC 6868Elliptical12 million ly
apart
NGC 6861Elliptical13 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).

← all galaxies