Sunflower Galaxy (M63 · NGC 5055) — Sbc in Canes Venatici
The Sunflower Galaxy (M63, NGC 5055) as a framed fine art print. Sbc in Canes Venatici, 11.8 arcminutes across, its light 24 million years old. Measured by…
About Sunflower Galaxy (M63 · NGC 5055)
The Sunflower Galaxy earns its name from its arms. Instead of two long sweeping spirals, it is built from many short arm segments, which give it the look of a flower's seeds rather than a pinwheel. Astronomers call this a flocculent spiral. Deep images reveal faint loops of stars far beyond the bright disc, the remains of a smaller galaxy it pulled apart long ago.
What you are looking at
The Sunflower Galaxy is a spiral of the same broad class astronomers give the Milky Way: a moderate bulge and clearly drawn arms. It is tilted about 55° to our line of sight, enough to show both the shape of its arms and the depth of its disc. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 84,000 light-years (taking its redshift distance, which for a galaxy this near is approximate), close to the width of the Milky Way.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as a LINER galaxy: its nucleus shows the faint, low-level activity of a black hole feeding slowly. Two supernovae have been recorded in it, the first in 1971; the most recent include SN 1971I, SN 2017dfc. It is cited in 1,315 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 42 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
Its light has been travelling for about 24 million years. When it left, Antarctica had begun to freeze. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 508 km/s (1.1 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, the Sunflower Galaxy sits within the constellation Canes Venatici. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in May it stands about 88° 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 (0.4° away on the sky, at least 170,000 light-years from it); NGC 5023 (2.1° away on the sky, at least 900,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 9 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 46153 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sbc |
| Angular diameter | 11.83′ |
| Right ascension | 13h15m49.3s |
| Declination | +42°01′45.4″ |
| Constellation | Canes Venatici |
| Inclination | 54.9° |
| Light travel time | 24 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 11.8 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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