NGC 5301 — SBc in Canes Venatici
SBc in Canes Venatici, 4.0 arcminutes across, its light 72 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 5301
What you are looking at
NGC 5301 is a late-type spiral: a small central bulge and open, loosely wound arms full of young stars and star-forming gas. A bar of stars runs straight across its centre, as one does across the centre of the Milky Way. We see it almost exactly edge-on, so its whole disc appears as one thin band of light, with dust showing as a dark line along its length. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 83,000 light-years, about 85% of the Milky Way’s width.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as a member of a group of galaxies. One supernova has been recorded in it: SN 2009at. It is cited in 139 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 22 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from NGC 5301 today set out about 72 million years ago, when dinosaurs were at their peak. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 1,506 km/s (3.4 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
NGC 5301 lies in Canes Venatici. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in May it stands about 84° 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 8588 (1.9° away on the sky, at least 2,350,000 light-years from it); NGC 5377 (2.0° away on the sky, at least 2,560,000 light-years from it); UGC 8688 (2.7° away on the sky, at least 3,390,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 247 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 48816 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SBc |
| Angular diameter | 3.96′ |
| Right ascension | 13h46m24.7s |
| Declination | +46°06′25.8″ |
| Constellation | Canes Venatici |
| Inclination | 90.0° |
| Light travel time | 72 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 4.0 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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