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NGC1365 · Great Barred Spiral Galaxy

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Great Barred Spiral Galaxy
Credit ESO · CC BY 4.0
Chinese name大棒旋星系
TypeGalaxy
ConstellationFor
RA03h33m
Dec−36°
Apparent magnitude9.6ᵐ
HemisphereSouthern
Best seasonWinter
DifficultyHard
Focal length长焦 1000mm+

About

The Great Barred Spiral Galaxy lies about 56 million light-years away in Fornax and is one of the largest and most archetypal barred spirals in the sky, roughly 200,000 light-years across. A huge stellar bar spans the disk, its ends connecting to two elegantly sweeping arms in textbook-perfect form. A member of the Fornax Cluster, it harbors a fast-spinning supermassive black hole of about 2 million solar masses and is a Seyfert active galaxy. Dust lanes along the bar funnel gas toward the core, driving nuclear star formation and black-hole activity. With clear, well-defined bar-and-arm structure, it is the benchmark for barred-spiral imaging and rewards deep long-focus shots of its arm and dust detail.