NGC 5879 — Sbc in Draco
Sbc in Draco, 3.8 arcminutes across, its light 37 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 5879
What you are looking at
NGC 5879 is a spiral of the same broad class astronomers give the Milky Way: a moderate bulge and clearly drawn arms. Its disc is steeply tilted, about 73° from face-on, so it appears as a long oval. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 40,000 light-years (taking its redshift distance, which for a galaxy this near is approximate), about half the width of the Milky Way.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as a galaxy with an active nucleus, powered by its central black hole. One supernova has been recorded in it: SN 1954C. It is cited in 265 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 24 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from NGC 5879 today set out about 37 million years ago, when the planet had come through its hottest interval since the dinosaurs. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 763 km/s (1.7 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
In the sky, NGC 5879 sits within the constellation Draco. 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.
Its neighbours
At almost the same distance from us, and so its neighbours in space as well as on the sky: Splinter Galaxy (1.1° away on the sky, at least 690,000 light-years from it); NGC 5866B (1.3° away on the sky, at least 800,000 light-years from it); NGC 5866 (1.3° away on the sky, at least 840,000 light-years from it); NGC 5870 (1.6° away on the sky, at least 1,010,000 light-years from it), and 1 more.
By apparent size it is number 277 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 54117 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sbc |
| Angular diameter | 3.79′ |
| Right ascension | 15h09m46.8s |
| Declination | +57°00′00.6″ |
| Constellation | Draco |
| Inclination | 72.7° |
| Light travel time | 37 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 3.8 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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