NGC 5985 — Sb in Draco
Sb in Draco, 4.0 arcminutes across, its light 121 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 5985
What you are looking at
NGC 5985 is a spiral with a sizeable central bulge and well-defined arms, close in type to the Milky Way. Its disc is steeply tilted, about 63° from face-on, so it appears as a long oval. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 139,000 light-years, about 1.4 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. It is cited in 271 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 27 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from NGC 5985 today set out about 121 million years ago, when the first flowering plants had appeared. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 2,519 km/s (5.6 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
In the sky, NGC 5985 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 5981 (0.2° away on the sky, at least 480,000 light-years from it); UGC 9837 (2.4° away on the sky, at least 5,060,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 244 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 55725 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sb |
| Angular diameter | 3.98′ |
| Right ascension | 15h39m37.1s |
| Declination | +59°19′55.1″ |
| Constellation | Draco |
| Inclination | 63.3° |
| Light travel time | 121 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 4.0 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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