NGC 5963

Alt. Designations: NGC 5963
Object Type: spiral galaxy
Constellation: Draco
Distance: 40 mly
Right Ascension: 15h 33m 27.8s
Declination: +56° 33´ 36"
Visual Magnitude: 12.3
Apparent Dimension: 3.3´ X 2.6´
Best Month To View: May

These two spiral galaxies make a photogenic pair, found within the boundaries of the northern constellation Draco. Contrasting in color and orientation, NGC 5965 is nearly edge-on to our line of sight and dominated by yellow hues, while bluish NGC 5963 is closer to face-on. Though they seem to be close and of similar size, galaxies NGC 5965 and NGC 5963 are far apart and unrelated, by chance appearing close on the sky. NGC 5965 is about 150 million light-years distant and over 200,000 light-years across. Much smaller, NGC 5963 is a mere 40 million light-years away and so is not associated with the edge-on spiral. Difficult to follow, NGC 5963's extraordinarily faint blue spiral arms mark it as a low surface brightness galaxy.