NGC 5987 — Sb in Draco
Sb in Draco, 3.8 arcminutes across, its light 144 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 5987
What you are looking at
NGC 5987 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 76° from face-on, so it appears as a long oval. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 160,000 light-years, about 1.6 times the width of the Milky Way.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as a member of a group of galaxies. It is cited in 101 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 5987 today set out about 144 million years ago, when the first birds had appeared. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 3,006 km/s (6.7 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
NGC 5987 lies in 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: UGC 9837 (2.1° away on the sky, at least 5,320,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 266 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 55740 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sb |
| Angular diameter | 3.84′ |
| Right ascension | 15h39m57.4s |
| Declination | +58°04′46.3″ |
| Constellation | Draco |
| Inclination | 76.4° |
| Light travel time | 144 million years |
| Bar | not recorded |
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 3.8 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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