NGC 5553

NGC 5553

NGC 5553 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Boötes about 212 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 71,000 ly, about 71% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 4,499 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · Sa
212 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
71k ly
across
14.6
apparent magnitude
4,499 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 212 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 5553 as it looked roughly 212 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 4397Barred spiral6.4 million ly
apart
NGC 5629Lenticular8.4 million ly
apart
IC 1013Spiral8.4 million ly
apart
IC 1017Lenticular11 million ly
apart
NGC 5581Elliptical11 million ly
apart
NGC 5659Barred spiral11 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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