The Great Barred Spiral Galaxy
NGC 1365 aka The Great Barred Spiral Galaxy. Part of Fornax galaxy cluster (a cluster of 58 galaxies).
This is one of the largest galaxies known, spanning at 200,000 light years across.
Distance to earth is 56 million light years.
Seen in the Fornax constellation.
The 2 bars on the northern and southern areas of the galaxy are made up of mainly massive young star clusters.
In the nucleus of the galaxy (close to the center) there is a large amount of dust and gas which makes for a perfect stellar nursery where newborn stars are formed!
In the middle, THE BLACK HOLE. With a mass 2 million times the mass of our Sun and spinning as fast as Einstein’s theory of gravity will allow, this is indeed a SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE.
Surrounding the black hold is an accretion disk of stars, dust, gas, materials… Hence why it looks so bright towards the center when observing.
This accretion disk is formed by the strong gravitational pull of the black hole, drawing material close to it.