NGC 5585 — SBd in Ursa Major
SBd in Ursa Major, 4.3 arcminutes across, its light 15 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 5585
What you are looking at
NGC 5585 is a loose spiral with almost no central bulge; its arms are patchy and ragged, and rich in gas. A bar of stars runs straight across its centre, as one does across the centre of the Milky Way. It is tilted about 53° 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 18,000 light-years (taking its redshift distance, which for a galaxy this near is approximate), about a fifth the width of the Milky Way.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as a member of a group of galaxies. It is cited in 460 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 19 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from NGC 5585 today set out about 15 million years ago, when grasslands were spreading across the continents. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 303 km/s (0.7 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 5585 lies in Ursa Major. From most of the United States it never sets: it circles the north celestial pole all year, and stands highest on summer evenings, around June.
By apparent size it is number 194 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 51210 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SBd |
| Angular diameter | 4.27′ |
| Right ascension | 14h19m48.2s |
| Declination | +56°43′45.8″ |
| Constellation | Ursa Major |
| Inclination | 53.1° |
| Light travel time | 15 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 4.3 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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