NGC 5302

NGC 5302

NGC 5302 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Centaurus about 166 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 51,000 ly, about 51% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 3,549 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0-a
166 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
51k ly
across
12.4
apparent magnitude
3,549 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 166 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 5302 as it looked roughly 166 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 5304Elliptical7.7 million ly
apart
IC 4325Spiral13 million ly
apart
NGC 5193ALenticular13 million ly
apart
IC 4264Spiral14 million ly
apart
NGC 5193Elliptical16 million ly
apart
NGC 5114Elliptical16 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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