NGC 5885 — SABc in Libra
SABc in Libra, 3.1 arcminutes across, its light 96 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 5885
What you are looking at
NGC 5885 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 34° 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 87,000 light-years, close to the width of the Milky Way.
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. It is cited in 76 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 14 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from NGC 5885 today set out about 96 million years ago, when dinosaurs were at their peak. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 2,001 km/s (4.5 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
In the sky, NGC 5885 sits within the constellation Libra. It is best placed on summer evenings: around 9:30 pm in June it stands about 40° 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 5861 (1.9° away on the sky, at least 3,150,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 470 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 54429 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SABc |
| Angular diameter | 3.12′ |
| Right ascension | 15h15m04.2s |
| Declination | -10°05′10.0″ |
| Constellation | Libra |
| Inclination | 33.7° |
| Light travel time | 96 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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