NGC 5560 — Sb in Virgo
Sb in Virgo, 3.5 arcminutes across, its light 83 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 5560
What you are looking at
NGC 5560 is a spiral with a sizeable central bulge and well-defined arms, close in type to the Milky Way. 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 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 one of a pair of galaxies. It is cited in 134 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 83 million years. When it left, dinosaurs were at their peak. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 1,730 km/s (3.9 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
In the sky, NGC 5560 sits within the constellation Virgo. It is best placed on summer evenings: around 9:30 pm in June it stands about 54° high in the south, 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 5566 (5′ away on the sky, at least 130,000 light-years from it); NGC 5569 (0.1° away on the sky, at least 170,000 light-years from it); NGC 5577 (0.6° away on the sky, at least 900,000 light-years from it); NGC 5574 (0.8° away on the sky, at least 1,130,000 light-years from it), and 4 more.
By apparent size it is number 365 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 51223 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sb |
| Angular diameter | 3.45′ |
| Right ascension | 14h20m04.4s |
| Declination | +03°59′33.9″ |
| Constellation | Virgo |
| Inclination | 90.0° |
| Light travel time | 83 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 3.5 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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