NGC 1365

NGC 1365, also known as the Great Barred Spiral Galaxy, is a barred spiral galaxy about 56 million light-years away in the constellation Fornax. The core is an oval shape with an apparent size of about 50″ × 40″. The spiral arms extend in a wide curve north and south from the ends of the east-west bar and form an almost ring like Z-shaped halo. The central mass in active galactic nucleus rotate close to relativistic limit (the dimensionless spin parameter is larger than 0.84).

Supernovae 2012fr, 2001du, 1983V, and 1957C were observed in NGC 1365.

In February 2013, observations using the NuSTAR satellite have found out that the central supermassive black hole of NGC 1365, measured to be about 2 million solar masses in mass, is spinning at almost the speed of light.