NGC 5548

NGC 5548

NGC 5548 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Boötes about 227 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 88,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 5,026 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0-a
227 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
88k ly
across
13.4
apparent magnitude
5,026 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 227 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 5548 as it looked roughly 227 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 4420Barred spiral8.6 million ly
apart
NGC 5610Barred spiral11 million ly
apart
NGC 5559Barred spiral13 million ly
apart
IC 1006Barred spiral14 million ly
apart
NGC 5581Elliptical14 million ly
apart
NGC 5677Barred spiral15 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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