NGC 5642

NGC 5642

NGC 5642 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Boötes about 202 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 100,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 4,355 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E
202 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
104k ly
across
14.2
apparent magnitude
4,355 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 202 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 5642 as it looked roughly 202 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 4447Lenticular3.7 million ly
apart
NGC 5641Spiral4.3 million ly
apart
IC 4442Barred spiral7.3 million ly
apart
NGC 5635Barred spiral9.2 million ly
apart
IC 4452Spiral9.9 million ly
apart
IC 4403Barred spiral10 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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