Bar None

Credit: Euro­pean South­ern Obser­va­tory (ESO)

A new image from the pow­er­ful HAWK-I tele­scope on Euro­pean South­ern Observatory’s Very Large Tele­scope at Paranal Obser­va­tory in Chile reveals the per­fect form of NGC 1365.

Explore the dust lanes in the barred spi­ral galaxy’s core. NGC 1365 is one of the best known and closely stud­ied barred spi­ral galax­ies because of its nearly per­fect form. The new infrared images show details that are hard to pick out through the gas and dust astronomers see in images in vis­i­ble light. A vast num­ber of stars glow in the cen­tral bar and along the spi­ral arms. The bar of the galaxy con­sists of older, yel­low stars. Near the edge of the spi­ral arms, pink neb­u­lae show birth places of stars. The huge cen­tral bar dis­torts the grav­ity field of the galaxy, caus­ing the gas and dust in the spi­ral arms to become squashed and stretched. This inter­ac­tion causes spurts of intense star for­ma­tion. Fol­low the spi­ral arms and look for the bright, blue young star clus­ters. The bar also fun­nels gas and dust toward the cen­ter of the galaxy where astronomers find evi­dence of a super-massive black hole.

The two huge outer spi­ral arms of NGC 1365 spread across 200,000 light-years. It takes these outer arms 350 mil­lion years to com­plete one lap around the galac­tic core. Some of the most well-known galax­ies are spi­ral galax­ies, sim­i­lar to the Androm­eda Galaxy. But most of the spi­ral galax­ies we see in the night sky are barred spi­ral galax­ies. Recent evi­dence sug­gests that our Milky Way Galaxy is a barred spi­ral galaxy. So study­ing a galaxy like NGC 1365 helps astronomers dis­cover more about our home galaxy.

NGC 1365 is found just around the cor­ner from Earth galac­ti­cally speak­ing. The galaxy is rel­a­tively close, lying about 60 mil­lion light-years away and is a mem­ber of the For­nax clus­ter of galax­ies.