NGC 6207 — Sc in Hercules
Sc in Hercules, 3.5 arcminutes across, its light 41 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 6207
NGC 6207 is a spiral in Hercules close in the sky to the Great Globular Cluster M13. Observers aiming at M13 often find it in the same field.
What you are looking at
NGC 6207 is a late-type spiral: a small central bulge and open, loosely wound arms full of young stars and star-forming gas. Its disc is steeply tilted, about 65° from face-on, so it appears as a long oval. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 41,000 light-years (taking its redshift distance, which for a galaxy this near is approximate), about half the width of the Milky Way.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as a member of a cluster of galaxies. One supernova has been recorded in it: SN 2004A. It is cited in 260 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 19 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from NGC 6207 today set out about 41 million years ago, when the planet had come through its hottest interval since the dinosaurs. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 852 km/s (1.9 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe. For a galaxy this close, its own motion through space is a large share of that speed, so the distance worked out from it is approximate; distances measured from individual stars in it can differ.
Finding it in the sky
In the sky, NGC 6207 sits within the constellation Hercules. It is best placed on summer evenings: around 9:30 pm in July it stands about 87° high in the south, seen from the middle of the United States.
Its neighbours
At almost the same distance from us, and so its neighbours in space as well as on the sky: UGC 10477 (1.2° away on the sky, at least 850,000 light-years from it); NGC 6255 (2.4° away on the sky, at least 1,700,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 361 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 58827 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sc |
| Angular diameter | 3.46′ |
| Right ascension | 16h43m03.7s |
| Declination | +36°49′56.4″ |
| Constellation | Hercules |
| Inclination | 64.7° |
| Light travel time | 41 million years |
| Bar | not recorded |
Check every figure above in the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database
What is sold
A print of this galaxy and the record of the calculation, once. When it sells it leaves the register and is not offered again. We assign no names and no ownership — nobody can sell you those.
At 3.5 arcminutes this is a Exceptional galaxy, which is the tier where a real photograph shows clear structure and dust lanes. The tier comes from the measured diameter, not from a price list.
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