NGC 5087

NGC 5087

NGC 5087 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Virgo about 85 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 74,000 ly, about 74% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 1,832 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E-S0
85 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
74k ly
across
11.1
apparent magnitude
1,832 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 85 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 5087 as it looked roughly 85 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 5134Spiral4.0 million ly
apart
NGC 5084Lenticular5.3 million ly
apart
NGC 5054Barred spiral6.8 million ly
apart
NGC 5037Spiral7.3 million ly
apart
NGC 5101Lenticular11 million ly
apart
IC 4249Spiral12 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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