NGC 5490

NGC 5490

NGC 5490 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Boötes about 232 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 110,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 5,008 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E
232 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
112k ly
across
12.1
apparent magnitude
5,008 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 232 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 5490 as it looked roughly 232 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 984Barred spiral7.0 million ly
apart
NGC 5513Lenticular12 million ly
apart
NGC 5504Barred spiral12 million ly
apart
NGC 5504BBarred spiral14 million ly
apart
NGC 5504CSpiral15 million ly
apart
NGC 5518Elliptical17 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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