NGC 1317 (also known as NGC 1318) is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation

Fornax Fornax () is a constellation in the southern celestial hemisphere, partly ringed by the celestial river Eridanus. Its name is Latin for furnace. It was named by French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille in 1756. Fornax is one of the 88 modern ...

, in the

Fornax cluster The Fornax Cluster is a cluster of galaxies lying at a distance of 19 megaparsecs (62 million light-years). It has an estimated mass of solar masses, making it the second richest galaxy cluster within 100 million light-years, after the consider ...

. It was discovered by Julius Schmidt on January 19, 1865. It appears to be interacting with the much larger

NGC 1316 NGC 1316 (also known as ''Fornax A'') is a lenticular galaxy about 60 million light-years away in the constellation Fornax. It is a radio galaxy and at 1400 MHz is the fourth-brightest radio source in the sky. Structure and formation In the late ...

, but uncertainty in distance estimates and scales of tidal distortions make this uncertain. It is a member of the NGC 1316 subgroup, part of the

Fornax Cluster The Fornax Cluster is a cluster of galaxies lying at a distance of 19 megaparsecs (62 million light-years). It has an estimated mass of solar masses, making it the second richest galaxy cluster within 100 million light-years, after the consider ...

. Its size is 2.8' x 2.4' which, at the average distance, gives a diameter of 55,000 light-years.

Distance estimates

NGC 1317 has an uncertain distance. Based on redshift, the distance is 55.1 million light-years, but some other methods estimate a distance as large as 88.4 million

light-years A light-year, alternatively spelled light year, is a large unit of length used to express astronomical distances and is equivalent to about 9.46 trillion kilometers (), or 5.88 trillion miles ().One trillion here is taken to be 1012 ...

. The distance of this galaxy is therefore somewhere between 55 and 88 Mly, but its true distance is unknown.https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/cgi-bin/objsearch?objname=NGC+1317&extend=no&hconst=73&omegam=0.27&omegav=0.73&corr_z=1&out_csys=Equatorial&out_equinox=J2000.0&obj_sort=RA+or+Longitude&of=pre_text&zv_breaker=30000.0&list_limit=5&img_stamp=YES The average distance between the two estimates is around 70 million light-years, which means NGC 1317 is also in the

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:NGC 1317 Fornax Cluster

1317 Year 1317 ( MCCCXVII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events December * December 10– 11 – King Birger of Sweden has his brothers, Dukes Eric and Valdemar, c ...

Fornax Barred spiral galaxies 012653