[Placidus (Mike and Trish)]

Originally Posted by alpal

Nice image Mike & Trish,
It's an interesting galaxy too:

http://www.constellation-guide.com/n...spiral-galaxy/

NGC 1365 is the dominant member of the Fornax Cluster, a cluster of galaxies located in the direction of Fornax constellation. The galaxy is approximately 200,000 light years in diameter, which is twice the length of the Milky Way, and has roughly the same mass as our galaxy.

In 2013, scientists were able to measure the rotation speed of the galaxy’s central black hole, discovering that the supermassive black hole, which is about 2 million miles wide, rotates at nearly 84 percent of the speed of light, which means that the surface is spinning at nearly light speed.

Thanks, Allan. The idea of something two million miles wide and rotating at 84% of the speed of light makes my driving seem quite chaste.

Originally Posted by gregbradley

That turned out very well.

Greg.

Thanks Greg.

Originally Posted by Shiraz

overall a very attractive image - pleasing to view.
The colours seem to have a bit more saturation than you usually use - is that due to the galaxy itself being more colourful?

Thanks Ray. We were quite influenced by your magnificent image, which is distinctly sharper and more contrasty than ours. I'm starting to find that making the image reasonably saturated (to the extent justified by the exposure and depth) is useful for spotting distant background galaxy clusters, because they tend to be very orange compared with nearby star clusters. However, that didn't help in this case. The other thing is I've always liked images of 1365 that veer toward having a warm orange centre, rather than toward the magenta and blue. But perhaps we've overdone it this time.