NGC 5791

NGC 5791

NGC 5791 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Libra about 154 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 120,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 3,332 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E
154 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
122k ly
across
11.8
apparent magnitude
3,332 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 154 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 5791 as it looked roughly 154 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 5810Barred spiral4.6 million ly
apart
IC 1077Barred spiral5.8 million ly
apart
NGC 5766Barred spiral7.1 million ly
apart
NGC 5793Barred spiral9.8 million ly
apart
IC 4501Spiral11 million ly
apart
IC 1081Lenticular12 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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