NGC 5908 — SBb in Draco
SBb in Draco, 3.4 arcminutes across, its light 159 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 5908
What you are looking at
NGC 5908 is a spiral with a sizeable central bulge and well-defined arms, close in type to the Milky Way. A bar of stars runs straight across its centre, as one does across the centre of the Milky Way. Its disc is steeply tilted, about 65° from face-on, so it appears as a long oval. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 155,000 light-years, about 1.6 times the width of the Milky Way.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as a member of a group of galaxies. It is cited in 176 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 18 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from NGC 5908 today set out about 159 million years ago, when Pangaea had begun to break apart. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 3,333 km/s (7.5 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
NGC 5908 lies in 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: NGC 5905 (0.2° away on the sky, at least 600,000 light-years from it); UGC 9759 (0.9° away on the sky, at least 2,380,000 light-years from it); UGC 9737 (1.3° away on the sky, at least 3,560,000 light-years from it); NGC 5876 (1.4° away on the sky, at least 3,790,000 light-years from it), and 5 more.
By apparent size it is number 390 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 54522 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SBb |
| Angular diameter | 3.37′ |
| Right ascension | 15h16m43.2s |
| Declination | +55°24′34.2″ |
| Constellation | Draco |
| Inclination | 65.3° |
| Light travel time | 159 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 3.4 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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