NGC 5556 — Scd in Hydra
Scd in Hydra, 3.5 arcminutes across, its light 66 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 5556
What you are looking at
NGC 5556 is a late-type spiral: a small central bulge and open, loosely wound arms full of young stars and star-forming gas. It is tilted about 38° 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 67,000 light-years (taking its redshift distance, which for a galaxy this near is approximate), about 68% of the Milky Way’s width.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as a Seyfert galaxy: its nucleus shines brightly with the light of gas falling into its central black hole. It is cited in 72 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 18 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
What a telescope records of NGC 5556 is light that left it about 66 million years ago; on Earth, dinosaurs were at their peak. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 1,383 km/s (3.1 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
In the sky, NGC 5556 sits within the constellation Hydra. It is best placed on summer evenings: around 9:30 pm in June it stands about 21° high in the south, seen from the middle of the United States.
By apparent size it is number 366 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 51245 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Scd |
| Angular diameter | 3.45′ |
| Right ascension | 14h20m34.1s |
| Declination | -29°14′30.3″ |
| Constellation | Hydra |
| Inclination | 37.8° |
| Light travel time | 66 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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