NGC 1097 in Fornax

[nandopg]

NGC 1097 is a barred spiral galaxy and also a Seyfert galaxy.

The galaxy is 45 million light years away from us in the constellation Fornax.
It is a severely interacting galaxy with obvious tidal debris and distortions caused by interaction with the companion galaxy NGC 1097A, visible on the image aligned with the major axis of the elliptical shape of NGC 1097's core.

NGC 1097 has a supermassive black hole at its center, with around 140 million times the mass of the Sun. Around the central black hole is a glowing ring of star-forming regions with a network of gas and dust that spirals from the ring to the black hole. An inflow of material toward the central bar of the galaxy causes new stars to be created in the ring.
The ring is approximately 5,000 light years in diameter, the spiral arms of the galaxy extend tens of thousands of light-years beyond the ring. The ring can be seen on this image, well in the center of the core.

Observational data:
Constellation Fornax
Right ascension 02h 46m 19.0s
Declination −30° 16′ 30″[1]
Redshift 1271 ± 3 km/s
Distance 45 million ly
Apparent magnitude (V) 10.2
Apparent size (V) 9′.3 × 6′.3
Other designations
PGC 10488, Caldwell

Image Stack:
Luminance: 35x400sec
Red: 16x600sec
Blue: 16x600sec
Green: 10x600sec

[johnrt]

Very nice, what equipment was used to capture this?

[nandopg]

Hi John,

Thank you very much!!

I instrument  used was:

Scope: Skywatcher QuttroCF-10, which is a 10" Newtoinan f/4 in carbon fiber 

Camera: StarlightExperss SX-694 from. 

Coma corrector:  GPU Apo 4 elements f/4. 

OAG and Filter Wheel come imbedded to the camera.

Mount:   AzEq Peo-6

That was the stup used.

Pre-processing and post- processing in Pixinsight.

[whipdry]

I like it.

Is this a crop of the full frame?

 

Peter

[DanWebster]

A great image, with an interesting story too. Thanks for sharing.

[PatrickGilliland]

Super image and processing.  Amazing to think its sculptured by nature almost man made in appearence. 

Well done.

Paddy

[Dark Horizon]

Wow, that's one heck of a nice galaxy... sweet!

[nandopg]

18 hours ago, whipdry said:

I like it.

Is this a crop of the full frame?

 

Peter

Yes, it is a cropped version of the full frame image.   I decided to do so to point out the nice details of this galaxy.

12 hours ago, Dark Horizon said:

Wow, that's one heck of a nice galaxy... sweet!

I think that from the Astrophysics standpoint, this is one of the coolest galaxies in the universe

 

Thank you all for the kind words and evaluation.

Fernando