NGC 5850

NGC 5850

NGC 5850 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo about 119 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 120,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 2,483 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Barred spiral
type · Sb
119 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
116k ly
across
11.0
apparent magnitude
2,483 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 119 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 5850 as it looked roughly 119 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 1125Spiral19 million ly
apart
NGC 5846AElliptical20 million ly
apart
NGC 5937Spiral20 million ly
apart
NGC 5869Lenticular22 million ly
apart
NGC 5661Barred spiral22 million ly
apart
IC 1084Elliptical23 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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