NGC 6920

NGC 6920

NGC 6920 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Octans about 123 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 82,000 ly, about 82% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 2,774 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0
123 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
82k ly
across
12.0
apparent magnitude
2,774 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 123 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 6920 as it looked roughly 123 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 5026Spiral7.0 million ly
apart
NGC 7095Barred spiral7.2 million ly
apart
NGC 6438Lenticular15 million ly
apart
NGC 7098Spiral17 million ly
apart
IC 5072Galaxy18 million ly
apart
NGC 2573BIrregular20 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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