NGC 5903

NGC 5903

NGC 5903 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Libra about 117 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 100,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 2,535 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Elliptical
type · E
117 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
102k ly
across
11.3
apparent magnitude
2,535 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 117 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 5903 as it looked roughly 117 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 5898Elliptical16 million ly
apart
IC 4536Barred spiral16 million ly
apart
IC 4538Spiral17 million ly
apart
IC 4468Barred spiral19 million ly
apart
NGC 5892Spiral20 million ly
apart
NGC 5744Spiral21 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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