ESO’s New Technology Telescope revisits NGC 6300

This image shows the bright centre and swirling arms of the spiral galaxy NGC 6300. NGC 6300 is located in a starry patch of sky in the southern constellation of Ara (The Altar) which contains a variety of intriguing deep-sky objects.

NGC 6300 has beautiful pinwheeling arms connected by a straight bar that cuts through the middle of the galaxy. While it may look like a standard spiral galaxy in visible-light images like this one, it is actually a Seyfert II galaxy.

Such galaxies have unusually luminous centres that emit very energetic radiation, meaning that they are often intensely bright in part of the spectrum either side of the visible. NGC 6300 is thought to contain a massive black hole at its heart some 300 000 times more massive than the Sun. This black hole is emitting high energy X-rays as it is fed by the material that is pulled into it.

This image of NGC 6300 was taken by the ESO Faint Object Spectrograph and Camera (EFOSC2) on the 3.58-metre New Technology Telescope (NTT). The NTT is based at ESO’s La Silla observing site, on the outskirts of the Atacama Desert in Chile, and was inaugurated in 1989. A black and white image of NGC 6300 was released at the time of the telescope’s inauguration — one of 31 images that were the first to be released from the NTT.

Credit:

ESO/C. Snodgrass

About the Image

Id:potw1509a
Type:Observation
Release date:2 March 2015, 10:00
Size:816 x 781 px

About the Object

Name:NGC 6300
Type:Local Universe : Galaxy : Type : Spiral
Distance:45 million light years
Constellation:Ara
Category:Galaxies

Image Formats

Large JPEG
463.4 KB
Screensize JPEG
449.1 KB

Zoomable


Wallpapers

1024x768
534.7 KB
1280x1024
765.2 KB
1600x1200
958.1 KB
1920x1200
1001.7 KB
2048x1536
1.3 MB

Coordinates

Position (RA):17 16 58.42
Position (Dec):-62° 49' 1.17"
Field of view:3.27 x 3.13 arcminutes
Orientation:North is 0.5° right of vertical

Colours & filters

BandTelescope
Optical
B
New Technology Telescope
EFOSC
Optical
V
New Technology Telescope
EFOSC
Optical
R
New Technology Telescope
EFOSC