NGC 5354 — S0 in Canes Venatici
S0 in Canes Venatici, 3.0 arcminutes across, its light 124 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 5354
What you are looking at
NGC 5354 is a lenticular galaxy: a disc galaxy that has largely used up the gas it needs to form new stars, so its disc is smooth and has no spiral arms. 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 108,000 light-years, 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. It belongs to Hickson Compact Group 68, one of the hundred tight knots of galaxies catalogued by Paul Hickson in 1982. Boris Vorontsov-Velyaminov listed it as VV 1663 in his catalogue of interacting galaxies. It is cited in 169 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 21 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
Its light has been travelling for about 124 million years. When it left, the first flowering plants had appeared. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 2,580 km/s (5.8 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
NGC 5354 lies in Canes Venatici. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in May it stands about 90° 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 5353 (1′ away on the sky, at least 40,000 light-years from it); NGC 5350 (4′ away on the sky, at least 140,000 light-years from it); NGC 5355 (4′ away on the sky, at least 150,000 light-years from it); NGC 5358 (0.1° away on the sky, at least 240,000 light-years from it), and 16 more.
By apparent size it is number 506 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 49354 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | S0 |
| Angular diameter | 3.03′ |
| Right ascension | 13h53m26.7s |
| Declination | +40°18′09.9″ |
| Constellation | Canes Venatici |
| Inclination | 90.0° |
| Light travel time | 124 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 3.0 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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