NGC 6909

NGC 6909

NGC 6909 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Telescopium about 126 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 87,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 2,730 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E
126 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
87k ly
across
12.0
apparent magnitude
2,730 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 126 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 6909 as it looked roughly 126 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 6870Spiral7.3 million ly
apart
IC 4943Elliptical8.7 million ly
apart
NGC 6902Barred spiral8.8 million ly
apart
NGC 6868Elliptical9.0 million ly
apart
NGC 6861Elliptical9.3 million ly
apart
NGC 6861CLenticular9.7 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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