Some galaxies make do with two neat spiral arms, NGC 613 kept a few extras, plus a great stellar bar that stirs its heart, driving gas inward and kindling new generations of stars
NGC 613 in the constellation Sculptor is a barred spiral galaxy of type SB(rs)bc, a strongly barred system with a weak inner ring and moderately open spiral arms It lies about 68 million light-years away and spans 5.3 by 4.1 arcminutes on the sky, roughly 104,000 light-years across, shining at blue magnitude 10.7
A long golden bar of older stars crosses the center, its leading edges traced by sharply defined dark dust lanes Where the bar meets the arms, chains of pink hydrogen-alpha emission mark regions of intense star formation, while the arms themselves glow blue with young massive stars
Rather than a clean two-armed pattern, NGC 613 unwinds into several arms, the outermost fading softly into a faint stellar halo At the very center a compact ring of star formation surrounds the nucleus The bar acts as a gravitational engine, channeling gas inward to feed the circumnuclear ring and an active nucleus classified as a possible Seyfert, with radio observations revealing a jet emerging from the core
In 2016 NGC 613 hosted the Type IIb supernova SN 2016gkg, whose initial shock breakout was captured by an amateur astronomer in Argentina, one of the earliest moments of a stellar explosion ever recorded
Imaged in LRGB and Hα, OTA Planewave CDK 1000, Camera Moravian C5 100, at Observatorio El Sauce, Chile
Image Acquisition and Processing: Mike Selby