NGC 5073

NGC 5073

NGC 5073 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo about 129 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 140,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 2,733 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · SBc
129 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
141k ly
across
13.5
apparent magnitude
2,733 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 129 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 5073 as it looked roughly 129 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 5049Lenticular4.0 million ly
apart
NGC 5031Lenticular4.5 million ly
apart
NGC 5044Elliptical5.0 million ly
apart
NGC 5077Elliptical5.6 million ly
apart
NGC 5079Barred spiral6.2 million ly
apart
IC 4221Barred spiral7.0 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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