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NGC 1365 is a wonderful galaxy in Fornax. This a very bright galaxy not far away from its “cousin” NGC 1097 (Caldwell 67) and surprisingly, this galaxy was overlooked by Caldwell when preparing his catalog. NGC 1365 is as bright as NGC 1097 and just a bit larger. This galaxy has a conspicuous bar with a bright core. In its core lies a supermassive black hole (several million solar masses), spinning at an enormous rate: nearly twice every minute!. This means that the event horizon is rotating at very closely the speed of light. This affects the structure of the galaxy and, especially, of its central bar. The actual accretion rate of the black hole seems to be an “ordered” one, in waves, so that its spin gets increasing instead of leveling down, as it would do if the accretion would be at random.
Additional Information
Object
Name(s): NGC 1365
Type: Barred Spiral galaxy
RA: 03h 33m 36s
Dec: -36º 08’ 35”
Constellation: Fornax
Size (arcmin): 11×6.2
Magnitude: +9.6
Distance: 59 Mly
Image
Date: 2015-09-18 to 2015-10-15
Location: iTelescope.net, SSO near Coonabarabran, NSW Australia
Size (arcmin): 33×37
Telescope: Planewave CDK 20” f/6.8
Camera: SBIG STX16803 (4096x4096pix)
Guiding: Astrodon MonsterMOAG off-axis guider
Total exposure: 22.5 hs (L: 7.5 hs; RGB: 15 hs)
Processing: CCDStack, Photoshop CC 2016 and PixInsight