NGC 1316
| NGC 1316 | |
|---|---|
A Hubble Space Telescope (HST) image of NGC 1316.
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| Observation data (J2000 epoch) | |
| Constellation | Fornax |
| Right ascension | 03h 22m 41.7s |
| Declination | −37° 12′ 30″ |
| Redshift | 1760 ± 10 km/s |
| Distance | 62.0 ± 2.9 Mly (19.0 ± 0.9 Mpc) |
| Apparent magnitude (V) | 9.4 |
| Characteristics | |
| Type | (R')SAB(s)00 |
| Apparent size (V) | 12′.0 × 8′.5 |
| Notable features | Very bright at radio 1.4 GHz |
| Other designations | |
| Fornax A,PGC 12651,Arp 154 | |
NGC 1316 (also known as Fornax A) is a lenticular galaxy about 60 million light-years away in the constellation Fornax. In the Catalogue of Named Galaxies, it is called Zygote Fornacis, or the germ-cell galaxy. NGC 1316 is a radio galaxy. It is the fourth-brightest radio source in the sky (as seen at 1400 MHz).
François Schweizer studied NGC 1316 extensively in the late 1970s. He found that the galaxy appeared to look like a small elliptical galaxy with some unusual dust lanes embedded within a much larger envelope of stars. The outer envelope contained many ripples, loops, and arcs. He also identified the presence of a compact disk of gas near the center that appeared inclined relative to the stars and that appeared to rotate faster than the stars. Based on these results, Schweizer suggested that NGC 1316 was built up through the merger of several smaller galaxies. These merger events may have fueled the central supermassive black hole, that has a mass estimated in 130-150 million of solar masses with gas, causing the galaxy to become a radio galaxy. He also states that NGC 1316 is comparable to the giant elliptical galaxies found in the centers of other clusters of galaxies. Using spectroscopy of its brightest globular clusters, the merger is estimated to have occurred ~3 billion years ago.
It has been proposed too that NGC 1316 may be a galaxy in evolution that eventually will become a Sombrero-like system dominated by a large bulge
NGC 1316 is located within the Fornax Cluster, a cluster of galaxies in the constellation Fornax. However, in contrast to Messier 87, which is a similar elliptical galaxy that is located in the center of the Virgo Cluster, NGC 1316 is located at the edge of the Fornax Cluster.
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Wikipedia