NGC 5126

NGC 5126

NGC 5126 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Centaurus about 215 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 120,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 4,706 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0-a
215 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
116k ly
across
14.2
apparent magnitude
4,706 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 215 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 5126 as it looked roughly 215 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 4251Barred spiral8.6 million ly
apart
NGC 5152Barred spiral11 million ly
apart
NGC 5051Spiral12 million ly
apart
IC 4295Barred spiral12 million ly
apart
IC 4275Barred spiral13 million ly
apart
NGC 5182Barred spiral13 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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