NGC 5661

NGC 5661

NGC 5661 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo about 110 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 37,000 ly, about 37% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 2,389 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · Sb
110 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
37k ly
across
14.2
apparent magnitude
2,389 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 110 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 5661 as it looked roughly 110 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 5665Spiral7.6 million ly
apart
NGC 5666Lenticular10 million ly
apart
NGC 5587Lenticular16 million ly
apart
NGC 5600Spiral17 million ly
apart
NGC 5846AElliptical21 million ly
apart
NGC 5850Barred spiral22 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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