Herschel's discovery is based on a single observation. He described the object as "very faint, very small". The position is just 23" from UGC 944, thus the two objects are generally regarded as equivalent.[6]John Louis Emil Dreyer, creator of theNew General Catalogue, added the object to the catalogue, adopting Herschel's description.[5]
The galaxy has an apparent size of 1.6 × 0.4 arcmins and appears very elongated. It has arecessional velocity of approximately 4810 kilometers per second. The distance of NGC 512 from the Solar System can be estimated usingHubble's law, which puts the object at roughly 220 million light-years from theSun.[5]
^abAn object's distance from Earth can be determined usingHubble's law:v=Ho is Hubble's constant (70±5 (km/s)/Mpc). The relative uncertainty Δd/d divided by the distance is equal to the sum of the relative uncertainties of the velocity andv=Ho
