NGC 5965 — SABb in Draco
SABb in Draco, 5.1 arcminutes across, its light 162 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 5965
What you are looking at
NGC 5965 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. 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 238,000 light-years, about 2.4 times the width of the Milky Way.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as a Seyfert galaxy: its nucleus is lit by gas falling into its central black hole. Two supernovae have been recorded in it, the first in 2001; the most recent include SN 2001cm, SN 2018cyg. It is cited in 134 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 22 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
Its light has been travelling for about 162 million years. When it left, Pangaea had begun to break apart. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 3,383 km/s (7.6 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
In the sky, NGC 5965 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: NGC 5971 (0.3° away on the sky, at least 880,000 light-years from it); NGC 5908 (2.7° away on the sky, at least 7,670,000 light-years from it); NGC 5905 (2.9° away on the sky, at least 8,000,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 120 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 55459 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SABb |
| Angular diameter | 5.08′ |
| Right ascension | 15h34m02.3s |
| Declination | +56°41′08.7″ |
| Constellation | Draco |
| Inclination | 90.0° |
| Light travel time | 162 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 5.1 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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