NGC 5079

NGC 5079

NGC 5079 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo about 133 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 53,000 ly, about 53% of our Milky Way's width. The light reaching us tonight left it about 133 million years ago.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · SBbc
133 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
53k ly
across
12.6
apparent magnitude

Because its light is 133 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 5079 as it looked roughly 133 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 5119Lenticular3.1 million ly
apart
NGC 5105Spiral4.1 million ly
apart
IC 4216Spiral4.8 million ly
apart
IC 4221Barred spiral5.5 million ly
apart
NGC 5122Lenticular5.9 million ly
apart
NGC 5066Spiral6.0 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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