NGC 5566

NGC 5566

NGC 5566 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo about 72 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 110,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 1,457 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · SBab
72 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
112k ly
across
10.5
apparent magnitude
1,457 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 72 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 5566 as it looked roughly 72 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 5576Elliptical1.6 million ly
apart
NGC 5577Barred spiral2.4 million ly
apart
NGC 5574Elliptical3.3 million ly
apart
NGC 5636Lenticular6.2 million ly
apart
IC 1024Lenticular6.3 million ly
apart
NGC 5701Lenticular6.4 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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