---
title: "Astronomy Photo of the Day: 6/03/14 – NGC 6872"
description: "[caption id=\"attachment_24062\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"500\"] Image Credit: Sydney Girls High School Astronomy Club,Travis Rector (Univ. Alaska), Ángel López-Sánchez (Australian Astronomical Obs./ Macquarie Univ.), Australian Gemini Office[/caption] This beauty, dubbed NGC 6872, is a spiral galaxy found more than 200 million light-years from Earth in the constellation of Pavo. As you can see, the galaxy has undergone..."
date: "2014-06-03"
modified: "2014-06-03"
authors:
  - name: "Jaime Trosper"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/jaimefqtq"
url: "https://futurism.com/apotd-ngc-6872"
categories:
  - "From Quarks to Quasars"
---

# Astronomy Photo of the Day: 6/03/14 – NGC 6872

![](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/NGC-6872.jpg>)

[![Image Credit: Sydney Girls High School Astronomy Club, Travis Rector (Univ. Alaska), Ángel López-Sánchez (Australian Astronomical Obs./ Macquarie Univ.), Australian Gemini Office](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/NGC-6872.jpg>)](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/NGC-6872.jpg>)
*Image Credit: Sydney Girls High School Astronomy Club,*
*Travis Rector (Univ. Alaska), Ángel López-Sánchez (Australian Astronomical Obs./ Macquarie Univ.), Australian Gemini Office*

This beauty,[ dubbed NGC 6872](<http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2009/ngc6872/>), is a spiral galaxy found more than 200 million light-years from Earth in the constellation of Pavo. As you can see, the galaxy has undergone a bit of turbulence over the last several millions of years, turbulence caused by NGC 6872's on-going duel with another galaxy that wandered too close to it. The interactions resulted in the galaxy's peculiar shape.

The culprit, a smaller galaxy called [IC 4970](<http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2009/ngc6872/>), can be seen below and to the right of NGC 6872's immense core. And when I say immense, I mean IMMENSE. NGC 6872 is purported to be about [four or five times larger ](<http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/galex/galex20130110.html>)than our own galaxy, which extends more than 100,000 light-years across. The given estimate for the former puts it at 522,000 light-years across (making it the [largest spiral galaxy ](<https://futurism.com/astronomers-find-the-largest-known-spiral-galaxy>)discovered to date)

*See a larger image [here](<http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1104/NGC6872_gemini.jpg>).*

## Author
Jaime is a freelance writer, who finds great joy in sharing the wonders of universe with others. She used this passion to launch "From Quarks to Quasars" in 2012.