NGC 5584 — SABc in Virgo
SABc in Virgo, 3.1 arcminutes across, its light 79 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 5584
NGC 5584 is a spiral in Virgo in which Hubble measured Cepheid stars, used to calibrate the expansion rate of the universe.
What you are looking at
NGC 5584 is a late-type spiral: a small central bulge and open, loosely wound arms full of young stars and star-forming gas. A weak bar of stars crosses its centre. It is tilted about 42° 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 72,000 light-years, about 74% of the Milky Way’s width.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as an emission-line galaxy: its spectrum shows the glow of gas lit by young stars. Two supernovae have been recorded in it, the first in 1996; the most recent include SN 1996aq, SN 2007af. It is cited in 305 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 25 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
What a telescope records of NGC 5584 is light that left it about 79 million years ago; on Earth, dinosaurs were at their peak. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 1,650 km/s (3.7 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
NGC 5584 lies in Virgo. It is best placed on summer evenings: around 9:30 pm in June it stands about 50° 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: UGC 9299 (1.8° away on the sky, at least 2,530,000 light-years from it); UGC 9215 (2.1° away on the sky, at least 2,940,000 light-years from it); NGC 5658 (2.6° away on the sky, at least 3,600,000 light-years from it); NGC 5496 (2.8° away on the sky, at least 3,860,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 467 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 51344 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SABc |
| Angular diameter | 3.13′ |
| Right ascension | 14h22m23.8s |
| Declination | -00°23′15.5″ |
| Constellation | Virgo |
| Inclination | 42.4° |
| Light travel time | 79 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 3.1 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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