NGC 1365

NGC 1365 is a galaxy in the constellation of the “Oven”.

We are hardly familiar with this zodiac sign because it hardly ever rises above the horizon.

This alien Milky Way is about 60 million light years away, i.e. we see its light, which has been traveling to us since the time when the Alps were forming on Earth and the Mediterranean was filling up.

Looking out into the depths of the universe is always an encounter with history. And even if this light is so old, we can learn a lot from it! A suggestion to political decision-makers: pick up the history books, read and learn from the mistakes of others.

In Arkaroola in Australia, in an environment where there is practically no light pollution, Eric Benson collected a total of almost 20 hours of exposure time in many individual black and white frames. I was allowed to edit these images together with Torsten Grossmann. Achieving this very good image result was difficult this time because the signals in the parts containing the colors were very weak. And the core also gave us a hard time – because there was an extremely large “dynamic range”. This means that the core is exorbitantly brighter than the rest of the galaxy. Image processing was therefore a particularly big challenge.

This image has also been published by NASA.

Coordinates:
RA: 03h 33m 36,4s
DC: -36° 08′ 25″

Exposure time:
55 hours

Award:
NASA (APOD)