NGC 5217

NGC 5217

NGC 5217 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices about 375 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 170,000 ly, about 1.7 times the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 8,070 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E
375 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
170k ly
across
13.9
apparent magnitude
8,070 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 375 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 5217 as it looked roughly 375 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 5151Elliptical16 million ly
apart
NGC 5249Lenticular19 million ly
apart
IC 897Lenticular20 million ly
apart
NGC 5207Barred spiral32 million ly
apart
IC 910Spiral37 million ly
apart
NGC 5181Elliptical39 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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