NGC 5550

NGC 5550

NGC 5550 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Boötes about 347 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 110,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 7,404 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · SBb
347 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
111k ly
across
14.1
apparent magnitude
7,404 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 347 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 5550 as it looked roughly 347 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 994Spiral11 million ly
apart
IC 993Barred spiral12 million ly
apart
NGC 5591 NED01Spiral12 million ly
apart
NGC 5532Lenticular13 million ly
apart
NGC 5591 NED02Spiral16 million ly
apart
NGC 5647Spiral19 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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