NGC 6959

NGC 6959

NGC 6959 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Aquarius about 171 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 25,000 ly, about 25% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 3,682 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0
171 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
25k ly
across
14.7
apparent magnitude
3,682 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 171 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 6959 as it looked roughly 171 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 6961Elliptical2.5 million ly
apart
NGC 6967Lenticular4.9 million ly
apart
NGC 6964Elliptical6.0 million ly
apart
NGC 6945Elliptical18 million ly
apart
NGC 6954Lenticular20 million ly
apart
IC 1317Elliptical20 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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