NGC 1097

NGC 1097 located in the constellation Fornax is a strange barred spiral galaxy about 45 Million light-years away from earth.
It is an active Seyfert galaxy. The central ring has a diameter of 5,000 light-years. It consists of new stars created by matter that flows towards the central bar of the galaxy.
A supermassive black hole with a mass of more than 100,000,000 suns resides in the centre of NGC 1097.
NGC 1097 is also a disturbed galaxy. Main impact may have the satellite galaxy NGC 1097A (PGC 10479) located north-west from the centre of NGC 1097. The second companion NGC 1097B / PGC 717425 – a small dwarf galaxy south-east from NGC1097 – may also have impact on the spiral structure of NGC1097.
Furthermore, NGC 1097 shows four weak jet-like structures at least three of them can be seen in the inverted image. One has the form of a “hammer” with a perpendicular bar north-east of the galaxy. Investigations show that these structures are no common jets consisting of gas ejected from the accretion disk rotating around the black-hole. In fact they seem to be star streams and it is believed that they are remains of a dwarf galaxy eaten up by the main galaxy.