Details: Discovered in 1854 by astronomer Georg Friedrich Julius Arthur von Auwers it is a galaxy whose galactic plane inclines toward us at nearly 80° similar to tilting a circular dinner plate from face on where we see the entire circle and pattern of the plate, to nearly edge on where we see only the plate’s edge. Unfortunately, this can prohibit detecting some details in the galaxy, such as in the plate example we have a harder time exactly determining the plate’s pattern if it is nearly edge on. The entire NGC 6503 galaxy is magnitude 10.2 making it nearly 50 times fainter than the faintest stars visible to the naked eye at a dark site.

One interesting discovery about NGC 6503 is that is may be part of the Local Void, an area of space adjacent to our own Local Group containing our Milky Way Galaxy, the great Andromeda Galaxy, and the Triangulum Galaxy. While our Local Group is about 10 million light-years across, the Local Void is something like 150 million to a billion light-years across. This Local Void extends beyond our group of galaxies in a vast area of space mostly empty with far fewer galaxies than average in the cosmos. The only exception to the void is three separate filaments of galaxies. Galaxy filaments comprised of many galaxies, each with 100s of billions of sons, form the cosmic web, a three-dimensional web of material including that defines the structure of our observable universe! Interestingly enough, NGC 6503 is likely at the remote tip of one of these filaments spanning nearly 30 million light years. (

While previously classified as only a spiral galaxy, today it has been recategorized to a barred spiral galaxy due to infrared observations detecting a possible bar structure and ultraviolet observations indicating a younger inner ring of star formation. Unfortunately, neither the central galactic bar nor the star ring is visible here. See NGC 1365 for one of the more popular examples of a barred spiral galaxy.

Annotations. In the image above, hover a mouse or curser over the image to show annotations of NGC 6503, with several enlarged insets identifying interesting features! Starting at the top is an enlarged inset of the galactic nucleus where a supermassive black hole governs the center of this galaxy. The remaining enlarged insets are distant galaxies or clusters of galaxies likely 100s of millions of light-years distant. Note also the bright 8.6 magnitude red-orange star. This star is about 10 times fainter than the faintest naked-eye star at a dark site. It has a spectral class of K5 meaning it is a common main-sequence star whose core fuses hydrogen into helium atoms. Its mass is 60% to 90% that of our sun and has a surface temperature of only 4000-5000 Kelvin compared to 5800K temperature of our sun.

Below Images: In the first image below, the same image has been processed to remove all foreground stars as these stars are all within our own galaxy. This is what the view would appear like if no stars existed along our line of sight. Using a mouse to hover over the image comma brings all the stars back. The second image below shows an enlarged and cropped version of NGC 6503 and this time hovering a mouse makes the stars disappear. The final image below was taken with the original C11 telescope, SBIG ST10SME 3Mpx camera, and very old original processing techniques. Hovering the mouse over this image reveals an overstretched luminance image shows outer galactic arms.

Object Statistics: Constellation: Draco, Right Ascension: 17h 49m 26s, Declination: +70° 08' 40”, Magnitude: 10.2, Size: 7.1’x2.4', Distance 21 million light-years, Size 30,000 – 60,000 light-years. This is the test template description.