NGC 5846

NGC 5846

NGC 5846 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Virgo about 80 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 99,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 1,710 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E
80 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
99k ly
across
10.2
apparent magnitude
1,710 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 80 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 5846 as it looked roughly 80 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 5854Lenticular1.9 million ly
apart
NGC 5831Elliptical2.4 million ly
apart
NGC 5775Barred spiral5.2 million ly
apart
NGC 5864Lenticular5.3 million ly
apart
IC 1066Spiral7.5 million ly
apart
NGC 5746Barred spiral7.6 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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