NGC 5918

NGC 5918

NGC 5918 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Boötes about 240 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 140,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. It is receding from us at about 5,169 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · Sc
240 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
140k ly
across
13.9
apparent magnitude
5,169 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 240 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 5918 as it looked roughly 240 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 5935Barred spiral17 million ly
apart
NGC 5895Spiral20 million ly
apart
NGC 5893Barred spiral21 million ly
apart
NGC 5945Spiral22 million ly
apart
NGC 5860 NED01Elliptical23 million ly
apart
NGC 5934Barred spiral24 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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