NGC 5899

NGC 5899

NGC 5899 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Boötes about 123 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 75,000 ly, about 75% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 2,549 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · Sc
123 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
75k ly
across
12.3
apparent magnitude
2,549 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 123 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 5899 as it looked roughly 123 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 5900Barred spiral3.7 million ly
apart
NGC 5930Spiral4.5 million ly
apart
NGC 5929Spiral6.0 million ly
apart
NGC 5950Barred spiral7.6 million ly
apart
NGC 5730Spiral15 million ly
apart
NGC 5731Spiral15 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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