NGC 5271

NGC 5271

NGC 5271 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici about 517 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 130,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 11,125 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · SBa
517 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
126k ly
across
15.1
apparent magnitude
11,125 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 517 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 5271 as it looked roughly 517 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 5280Elliptical10 million ly
apart
NGC 5251Lenticular27 million ly
apart
IC 4334Elliptical29 million ly
apart
IC 4258Elliptical31 million ly
apart
IC 4307Lenticular33 million ly
apart
NGC 5277Barred spiral38 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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