NGC 5248 — SABb in Boötes
SABb in Boötes, 4.1 arcminutes across, its light 55 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 5248
What you are looking at
NGC 5248 is a spiral with a sizeable central bulge and well-defined arms, close in type to the Milky Way. A weak bar of stars crosses its centre. It is tilted about 56° 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 66,000 light-years (taking its redshift distance, which for a galaxy this near is approximate), about 67% of the Milky Way’s width.
What astronomers have recorded
Patrick Moore listed it as Caldwell 45 in his 1995 catalogue of the finest deep-sky objects for amateur observers. It is cited in 567 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 18 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
Its light has been travelling for about 55 million years. When it left, the planet had come through its hottest interval since the dinosaurs. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 1,152 km/s (2.6 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
NGC 5248 lies in Boötes. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in May it stands about 59° high in the south, 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 8575 (0.4° away on the sky, at least 430,000 light-years from it); UGC 8629 (0.5° away on the sky, at least 490,000 light-years from it); UGC 8614 (1.2° away on the sky, at least 1,200,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 231 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 48130 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SABb |
| Angular diameter | 4.07′ |
| Right ascension | 13h37m32.0s |
| Declination | +08°53′06.6″ |
| Constellation | Boötes |
| Inclination | 56.4° |
| Light travel time | 55 million years |
| Bar | yes, from the catalogue |
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 4.1 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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