Object of the Week - May 8th, 2016 - NGC 5383 Canes Venatici
Object of the Week - May 8th, 2016 - NGC 5383 Canes Venatici
NGC 5383 = UGC 8875 = MCG +07-29-023 = CGCG 219-033 = Mrk 281 = PGC 49618
R.A.: 13h57m05.0s
Dec.: +41°50'46" (2000)
Size: 2.5'x 2.0' Mag: 12.20 B
NGC 5383 is a barred spiral galaxy (Sb) in Canes Venatici, about 100 million light years distant, and discovered by William Herschel on Apr 9, 1787. With a major axis of 2.5 arc-minutes it is not very large, but it is still large enough to be interesting.
On an average night in the local desert I spent a lot of time trying to tease out details, with some success. My overall first impression was of a slightly squashed face-on spiral galaxy with an obvious bright core elongated east-west, surrounded by a hazy outer shell. The galaxy's 'bar' runs almost north to south and was a very tenuous feature on this night, but the two elongated regions of star formation that emanate from each end of the bar are much easier to see.
The view is enhanced by the wide pair of 14th magnitude stars that reside on the eastern edge of the galaxy...
Only about 1-1/2 galaxy-diameters to the south of NGC 5383 lies UGC 8877, a very low surface-brightness face-on barred spiral, and on the night I viewed 5383 I couldn't see any trace of this guy. Perhaps next time.
The best photos show that the core is formed by 3 distinctly individual components, but this was impossible to detect visually.
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