NGC 5104

NGC 5104

NGC 5104 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo about 257 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 90,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 5,610 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · Sa
257 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
90k ly
across
14.3
apparent magnitude
5,610 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 257 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 5104 as it looked roughly 257 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
IC 4224Barred spiral13 million ly
apart
NGC 4996Lenticular14 million ly
apart
NGC 4999Barred spiral16 million ly
apart
IC 850Barred spiral16 million ly
apart
IC 849Spiral17 million ly
apart
NGC 5095Lenticular17 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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