NGC 5371 — Sbc in Canes Venatici
Sbc in Canes Venatici, 4.0 arcminutes across, its light 123 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 5371
What you are looking at
NGC 5371 is a spiral of the same broad class astronomers give the Milky Way: a moderate bulge and clearly drawn arms. It is tilted about 54° 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 142,000 light-years, about 1.5 times 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 1994; the most recent include SN 1994Y, SN 2020bio. It is cited in 376 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 35 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
What a telescope records of NGC 5371 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 2,578 km/s (5.8 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
NGC 5371 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 5358 (0.4° away on the sky, at least 790,000 light-years from it); NGC 5355 (0.4° away on the sky, at least 820,000 light-years from it); NGC 5350 (0.4° away on the sky, at least 960,000 light-years from it); NGC 5354 (0.5° away on the sky, at least 970,000 light-years from it), and 15 more.
By apparent size it is number 243 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 49514 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sbc |
| Angular diameter | 3.98′ |
| Right ascension | 13h55m39.9s |
| Declination | +40°27′42.1″ |
| Constellation | Canes Venatici |
| Inclination | 54.0° |
| Light travel time | 123 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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