NGC 6970

NGC 6970

NGC 6970 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Indus about 246 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 110,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 5,211 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · SBa
246 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
110k ly
across
12.6
apparent magnitude
5,211 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 246 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 6970 as it looked roughly 246 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 6987Elliptical4.4 million ly
apart
NGC 6918Lenticular16 million ly
apart
NGC 7038Spiral23 million ly
apart
NGC 6983Spiral23 million ly
apart
NGC 7014Elliptical24 million ly
apart
NGC 6982Barred spiral28 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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