NGC 5689 — S0-a in Boötes
S0-a in Boötes, 3.7 arcminutes across, its light 104 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 5689
What you are looking at
NGC 5689 is a lenticular galaxy: a disc galaxy that has largely used up the gas it needs to form new stars, so its disc is smooth and has no spiral arms. We see it almost exactly edge-on, so its whole disc appears as one thin band of light, with dust showing as a dark line along its length. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 110,000 light-years, close to the width of the Milky Way.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as one of a pair of galaxies. It is cited in 133 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 19 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
What a telescope records of NGC 5689 is light that left it about 104 million years ago; on Earth, the first flowering plants had appeared. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 2,168 km/s (4.9 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
NGC 5689 lies in Boötes. It is best placed on summer evenings: around 9:30 pm in June it stands about 81° 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 5693 (0.2° away on the sky, at least 350,000 light-years from it); UGC 9426 (0.3° away on the sky, at least 630,000 light-years from it); NGC 5676 (0.8° away on the sky, at least 1,520,000 light-years from it); IC 1029 (1.3° away on the sky, at least 2,290,000 light-years from it), and 7 more.
By apparent size it is number 299 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 52154 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | S0-a |
| Angular diameter | 3.66′ |
| Right ascension | 14h35m29.7s |
| Declination | +48°44′29.6″ |
| Constellation | Boötes |
| Inclination | 90.0° |
| Light travel time | 104 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 3.7 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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