This beautiful, eerie silhouette of dark dust clouds against the glowing nucleus of the elliptical galaxy NGC 1316 may represent the aftermath of a 100 million year old cosmic collision between the elliptical and a smaller companion galaxy.
A number of faint objects are scattered across the image, including both reddish galaxies in the distant background and bluer, point-like star clusters orbiting NGC 1316. These clusters, relatively loosely-knit swarms containing a few thousand stars each, are smaller and fainter than those found in other elliptical galaxies. These clusters are too old to have been created in the collision which produced the dusty debris we see today, and too young to have been torn apart by galactic tidal forces. The clusters may have been born in the course of a still earlier collision, or belonged to the galaxy which most recently fell victim to NGC 1316.
The picture was taken in April of 1996 with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. The color rendition was constructed using separate images taken in blue and red light. NGC 1316 is located 53 million light-years away in the constellation Fornax. The field of view shown is about 12,000 light-years across.
Credits
Carl Grillmair (California Institute of Technology) and NASA| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | NGC 1316, Fornax A |
| Object Description | Elliptical Galaxy |
| R.A. Position | 03h 22m 41.5s |
| Dec. Position | -37° 12' 33.0" |
| Constellation | Fornax |
| Distance | The galaxy is roughly 75 million light-years (23 Megaparsecs) away. |
| Dimensions | This image is 2.7 arcminutes (60,000 light-years or 18,000 parsecs) wide. |
| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | A name or catalog number that astronomers use to identify an astronomical object. |
| Object Description | The type of astronomical object. |
| R.A. Position | Right ascension – analogous to longitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Dec. Position | Declination – analogous to latitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Constellation | One of 88 recognized regions of the celestial sphere in which the object appears. |
| Distance | The physical distance from Earth to the astronomical object. Distances within our solar system are usually measured in Astronomical Units (AU). Distances between stars are usually measured in light-years. Interstellar distances can also be measured in parsecs. |
| Dimensions | The physical size of the object or the apparent angle it subtends on the sky. |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description |
|
| Instrument | The science instrument used to produce the data. |
| Exposure Dates | The date(s) that the telescope made its observations and the total exposure time. |
| Filters | The camera filters that were used in the science observations. |
| About The Image | |
| Image Credit | The primary individuals and institutions responsible for the content. |
| Publication Date | The date and time the release content became public. |
| Color Info | A brief description of the methods used to convert telescope data into the color image being presented. |
| Orientation | The rotation of the image on the sky with respect to the north pole of the celestial sphere. |
