NGC 1365

High-Res

Object: NGC 1365

The Great Barred Spiral Galaxy, NGC 1365, lies 60 million light-years from Earth and is the dominant member of the Fornax Galaxy Cluster. It spans an incredible 200,000 light-years across, rotating in a clockwise direction with a period of 350 million years. The prominent bar feature of this galaxy is responsible for generating the abundant star-forming regions seen in the spiral arms as well as funneling gas and dust inward toward the core where a several million solar mass supermassive black hole resides.

A 2013 study by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CFA), using data from the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) and ESO’s XMM-Newton X-Ray satellites, were able to determine the spin rate of the black hole at the center of NGC 1365. This 2 million mile diameter monster was found to be spinning at nearly the speed of light at its event horizon edge dragging the fabric of space-time around with it and creating a massive accretion disc of material in-spiraling toward the hole as gravitational and frictional forces heat up the material to incredibly high temperatures resulting in X-ray emissions.