NGC 5839

NGC 5839

NGC 5839 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Virgo about 57 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 24,000 ly, about 24% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 1,230 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Lenticular
type · S0
57 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
24k ly
across
12.2
apparent magnitude
1,230 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 57 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 5839 as it looked roughly 57 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 5841Lenticular1.5 million ly
apart
NGC 5806Barred spiral6.0 million ly
apart
NGC 5838Elliptical6.6 million ly
apart
NGC 5921Barred spiral10 million ly
apart
NGC 5770Lenticular12 million ly
apart
NGC 5645Barred spiral13 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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