NGC 5701

Located in the Virgo cluster, the barred lenticular galaxy NGC 5701 is about 70 million light years away with an inclination of 15 degrees, so that it appears face on with the plane of the ring. Notable features are a lens shaped yellowish inner region embedded in an area of lower luminosity which connects to the blue spiral arms.  

A smaller more distant galaxy (PGC214310) can be seen through the rings while other background galaxies (PGC214311 and PCG1282083) are also visible.   Even further out are five quasers which are estimated to be about 10 billion light years away, their positions are marked in the annotated version of the image.

I could only find one other image on SGL of this galaxy, making this a neglected target.  I’d encourage other contributions but note that it is a challenging target. Whilst the central bar is quite bright, the ring structure is very faint so you’ll need lots of long exposures and dark skies. It is also quite small, so you’ll also need a relatively low arc seconds per pixel set up.

The image was taken with my Esprit 150 and represents about 13 hours integration time.