Located at a comoving distance of 4.51 Mpc,[4] it is 64.4 arcseconds in diameter.

[8] NGC 5238 has two stellar streams: one umbrella-shaped one to its north, and another sparser overdensity of stars to its south.

[23] Five years later, in 2007, the distance estimate was lowered even further to 4.50 Mpc, extremely close to today's accepted value.

When combined with corrections for interstellar reddening, this allows for accurate determination of a galaxy's distance.

By 2009, a Hubble Space Telescope image of NGC 5238 had become available, resolving the individual stars within the galaxy.

[25] Two years later, the 20% line width was calculated at two conflicting values from two studies: 47 km/s and 65 km/s.

[3] In addition to HI gas, it is thought that radio continuum emission should be present from NGC 5238 as well.

Based on this, it is to be expected that there should be radio continuum emission from the galaxy, due to the acceleration of electrons in HII regions, known as bremsstrahlung.