NGC 5921 — Sbc in Serpens
Sbc in Serpens, 3.0 arcminutes across, its light 69 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 5921
What you are looking at
NGC 5921 is a spiral of the same broad class astronomers give the Milky Way: a moderate bulge and clearly drawn arms. It is tilted about 50° 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 61,000 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
One supernova has been recorded in it: SN 2001X. It is cited in 288 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 17 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from NGC 5921 today set out about 69 million years ago, when dinosaurs were at their peak. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 1,440 km/s (3.2 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 5921 sits within the constellation Serpens. It is best placed on summer evenings: around 9:30 pm in June it stands about 55° high in the south, seen from the middle of the United States.
By apparent size it is number 514 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 54849 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sbc |
| Angular diameter | 3.02′ |
| Right ascension | 15h21m56.5s |
| Declination | +05°04′14.3″ |
| Constellation | Serpens |
| Inclination | 49.5° |
| Light travel time | 69 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 3.0 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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