Photo # 2 (Apr 2011)

NGC 1365: MAJESTIC ISLAND UNIVERSE 


The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe,
to match your nature with Nature.
- Joseph Campbell

Credit & Copyright: SSRO-South

Barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365 is truly a majestic island universe some 200,000 light-years across. Located a mere 60 million light-years away toward the chemical constellation Fornax, NGC 1365 is a dominant member of the well-studied Fornax galaxy cluster. This impressively sharp color image shows intense star forming regions at the ends of the bar and along the spiral arms, as well as details of dust lanes cutting across the galaxy's bright core. At the core lies a supermassive black hole. Astronomers think NGC 1365's prominent bar plays a crucial role in the galaxy's evolution, drawing gas and dust into a star-forming maelstrom and ultimately feeding material into the central black hole.

Ours is but one of countless galaxies in the universe. Each galaxy has millions or billions of stars. How many of these have living beings upon them... Some of whom are gazing up at the night sky and wondering whether our Milky Way Galaxy has life in it...
                                      - Dan Benor, MD