NGC 6814 — SABb in Aquila
SABb in Aquila, 3.1 arcminutes across, its light 75 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 6814
NGC 6814 is a Seyfert galaxy with a bright, variable nucleus and beautifully regular face-on arms. A detailed Hubble image of it was released in 2020.
What you are looking at
NGC 6814 is a spiral with a sizeable central bulge and well-defined arms, close in type to the Milky Way. A weak bar of stars crosses its centre. Its disc is turned almost exactly side-on to us: the galaxy appears as a narrow blade of light, and its dust as a dark seam running along it. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 67,000 light-years, about 69% of the Milky Way’s width.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as a Seyfert galaxy: its nucleus shines brightly with the light of gas falling into its central black hole. It is cited in 875 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 41 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
What a telescope records of NGC 6814 is light that left it about 75 million years ago; on Earth, dinosaurs were at their peak. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 1,563 km/s (3.5 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
In the sky, NGC 6814 sits within the constellation Aquila. It is best placed on summer evenings: around 9:30 pm in August it stands about 40° high in the south, seen from the middle of the United States.
By apparent size it is number 485 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 63545 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SABb |
| Angular diameter | 3.08′ |
| Right ascension | 19h42m40.6s |
| Declination | -10°19′25.3″ |
| Constellation | Aquila |
| Inclination | 85.6° |
| Light travel time | 75 million years |
| Bar | yes, from the catalogue |
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 3.1 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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