This object is a small galaxy located 350 million light years away in the constellation of Virgo at a declination of +14 degrees. This magnitude 12 galaxy spans 2 arc-minutes in our apparent view, which corresponds to a diameter of 170,000 light years.
I saw this one in the Aladin sky atlas and decided to image it because of its amazing similarity to
M101, as shown in the mouseover comparison.
The similarities to M101 include:
- The actual sizes. Both galaxies are huge at about 170,000 light years across.
- The offset cores.
- The size and brightness of the unbarred cores.
- The coloring of the cores and arms.
- The
VV rows in the arms.
- The abundance of bright blue star clusters throughout the arms.
- The number of arms and how they fragment away from the core.
- The area void of galaxy disk at the upper right.
The 2 galaxies have opposite rotational directions, so I flipped M101 for this image comparison. NGC 5320 is about 10 times smaller than M101 in our apparent view and is about 10 times further away.
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