NGC 5963 — SABb in Draco
SABb in Draco, 3.1 arcminutes across, its light 32 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 5963
NGC 5963 is a low-surface-brightness spiral with a compact, bright inner spiral surrounded by a faint outer disc.
What you are looking at
NGC 5963 is a spiral with a sizeable central bulge and well-defined arms, close in type to the Milky Way. A weak bar of stars crosses its centre. It is tilted about 39° 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 29,000 light-years (taking its redshift distance, which for a galaxy this near is approximate), about a third 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 114 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 20 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from NGC 5963 today set out about 32 million years ago, when Antarctica had begun to freeze. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 661 km/s (1.5 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 5963 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 (2.4° away on the sky, at least 1,350,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 465 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 55419 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SABb |
| Angular diameter | 3.14′ |
| Right ascension | 15h33m27.9s |
| Declination | +56°33′35.0″ |
| Constellation | Draco |
| Inclination | 39.3° |
| Light travel time | 32 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.
Take this galaxy — $1,290 Browse the Collection