NGC 5861

NGC 5861

NGC 5861 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Libra about 88 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 71,000 ly, about 71% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 1,826 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · SABc
88 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
71k ly
across
11.7
apparent magnitude
1,826 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 88 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 5861 as it looked roughly 88 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 5885Spiral6.3 million ly
apart
NGC 5878Barred spiral6.9 million ly
apart
NGC 5812Elliptical7.8 million ly
apart
NGC 5917Barred spiral8.1 million ly
apart
NGC 5858Elliptical10 million ly
apart
NGC 5781Barred spiral10 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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