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      Great Barred Spiral Galaxy in Fornax
      Wallpaper author:
      Patrick Thompson

      06 Aug 2025

      Great Barred Spiral Galaxy in Fornax

      This is NGC 1365, the Great Barred Spiral Galaxy in Fornax (GBSGF), about 56 million light years from Earth. It has a supermassive black hole at its center--approximately 2 million times the mass of our sun. The outer rim of the black hole is spinning very rapidly, estimated at 90% confidence between 84% and 97% the speed of light. This means if we were to observe an object on this outer rim, one hour in this object's frame of reference would be more than 2.25 hours to us.


      GBSGF is approximately 200,000 light years in diameter, more than twice that of the Milky Way. It contains an estimated 200 to 400 billion stars.

      Dataset from which the image was processed

      NGC 1365

      3 credit

      Open
      Telescope Live
      CHI-3-CCD
      • Type of target
        ............................................................................................................................
        Galaxy
      • Camera
        ............................................................................................................................
        FLI PL16803
      • Target coordinates
        ............................................................................................................................
        RA 53.4 Dec -36.14056
      • Hemisphere
        ............................................................................................................................
        Southern
      • Telescope location
        ............................................................................................................................
        Chile
      • Transient event
        ............................................................................................................................
        No
      • Observed on
        ............................................................................................................................
        21 Nov 2020 - 13 Dec 2020
      Filter
      Avg Exp (s)
      Total Exposure
      Subframes
      Luminance3001h5m13
      Red3691h20m13
      Green23150m13
      Blue3001h12

      Great Barred Spiral Galaxy in Fornax