NGC 5023 — Sc in Canes Venatici
Sc in Canes Venatici, 6.2 arcminutes across, its light 20 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 5023
What you are looking at
NGC 5023 is a late-type spiral: a small central bulge and open, loosely wound arms full of young stars and star-forming gas. Its disc is turned almost exactly side-on to us: the galaxy appears as a narrow blade of light, and its dust as a dark seam running along it. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 35,000 light-years (taking its redshift distance, which for a galaxy this near is approximate), about a third the width of the Milky Way.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as an emission-line galaxy: its spectrum shows the glow of gas lit by young stars. It is cited in 272 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 19 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from NGC 5023 today set out about 20 million years ago, when grasslands were spreading across the continents. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 407 km/s (0.9 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe. For a galaxy this close, its own motion through space is a large share of that speed, so the distance worked out from it is approximate; distances measured from individual stars in it can differ.
Finding it in the sky
In the sky, NGC 5023 sits within the constellation Canes Venatici. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in May it stands about 86° high in the north, close to overhead, seen from the middle of the United States.
Its neighbours
At almost the same distance from us, and so its neighbours in space as well as on the sky: UGC 8313 (1.9° away on the sky, at least 630,000 light-years from it); Sunflower Galaxy (2.1° away on the sky, at least 720,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 70 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 45849 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sc |
| Angular diameter | 6.22′ |
| Right ascension | 13h12m11.7s |
| Declination | +44°02′15.7″ |
| Constellation | Canes Venatici |
| Inclination | 90.0° |
| Light travel time | 20 million years |
| Bar | not recorded |
Check every figure above in the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database
What is sold
A print of this galaxy and the record of the calculation, once. When it sells it leaves the register and is not offered again. We assign no names and no ownership — nobody can sell you those.
At 6.2 arcminutes this is a Exceptional galaxy, which is the tier where a real photograph shows clear structure and dust lanes. The tier comes from the measured diameter, not from a price list.
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