NGC 3081
galaxy
NGC 3081 is a barred lenticular ring galaxy in the constellation of Hydra.
NGC 3081 is located about 85 million light-years away from Earth, which means, given its apparent dimensions, that NGC 3081 is approximately 60,000 light-years across. It is a type II Seyfert galaxy, characterised by its bright nucleus. It was discovered by William Herschel on 21 December 1786.
NGC 3081 is seen nearly face-on. The galaxy's barred spiral centre is surrounded by a bright loop known as a resonance ring. This ring is full of bright clusters and bursts of new star formation, and frames the supermassive black hole thought to be lurking within NGC 3081—which glows brightly as it gobbles up infalling material.
Characteristics
Active galactic nucleus
NGC 3081 is known to feature an active galaxy nucleus which leads to being categorised as a type II Seyfert galaxy. Even though NGC 3081 shows significant absorption, it is Compton thin. Also it does not show spectral variability on monthly timescales in X-rays.
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This entry incorporates text from “NGC 3081” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.