WISE

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

Observation • May 25th, 2011

This barred spiral has a dense inner ring that surrounds a bright, central core. The ring is actually two spiral arms that are closed in on each other. In contrast to its well-defined center, this galaxy's arms are patchy, or flocculent. It is inclined about 43 degrees away from an edge-on orientation, and has a diameter of 135,000 light-years. NGC 1398 is 65 million light-years away in the Fornax constellation, and is part of the Fornax cluster of galaxies.