NGC 5290 — Sbc in Canes Venatici
Sbc in Canes Venatici, 3.2 arcminutes across, its light 123 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 5290
What you are looking at
NGC 5290 is a spiral of the same broad class astronomers give the Milky Way: a moderate bulge and clearly drawn arms. 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 115,000 light-years, about 1.2 times the width of the Milky Way.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as a Seyfert galaxy: its nucleus is lit by gas falling into its central black hole, though dust hides part of that glow from us. It is cited in 190 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 37 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
What a telescope records of NGC 5290 is light that left it about 123 million years ago; on Earth, the first flowering plants had appeared. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 2,559 km/s (5.7 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
In the sky, NGC 5290 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: NGC 5289 (0.2° away on the sky, at least 450,000 light-years from it); NGC 5320 (1.0° away on the sky, at least 2,130,000 light-years from it); UGC 8726 (1.3° away on the sky, at least 2,800,000 light-years from it); UGC 8656 (1.6° away on the sky, at least 3,320,000 light-years from it), and 17 more.
By apparent size it is number 435 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 48767 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sbc |
| Angular diameter | 3.24′ |
| Right ascension | 13h45m19.1s |
| Declination | +41°42′44.9″ |
| Constellation | Canes Venatici |
| Inclination | 80.6° |
| Light travel time | 123 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 3.2 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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