NGC 5916 — SBa in Libra
SBa in Libra, 3.1 arcminutes across, its light 110 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 5916
What you are looking at
NGC 5916 is an early-type spiral: a large, bright central bulge wrapped in smooth, tightly wound arms. A bar of stars runs straight across its centre, as one does across the centre of the Milky Way. Its disc is turned almost exactly side-on to us: the galaxy appears as a narrow blade of light, and its dust as a dark seam running along it. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 99,000 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 56 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 13 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from NGC 5916 today set out about 110 million years ago, when the first flowering plants had appeared. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 2,304 km/s (5.2 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
In the sky, NGC 5916 sits within the constellation Libra. It is best placed on summer evenings: around 9:30 pm in June it stands about 37° 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 5915 (5′ away on the sky, at least 150,000 light-years from it); NGC 5916A (0.1° away on the sky, at least 230,000 light-years from it); NGC 5878 (2.2° away on the sky, at least 4,230,000 light-years from it); NGC 5892 (3.0° away on the sky, at least 5,710,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 482 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 54825 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SBa |
| Angular diameter | 3.09′ |
| Right ascension | 15h21m37.9s |
| Declination | -13°10′09.3″ |
| Constellation | Libra |
| Inclination | 90.0° |
| Light travel time | 110 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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