NGC 1052


NGC 1052 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Cetus.

Features

1052 is located at a distance of around 63 million light years from the Milky Way, and has a LINER-type active galactic nucleus which signals the intense starburst activity in the galaxy's center that were confirmed with observations with better resolution showing a number of star-forming regions and young star clusters.
NGC 1052 shows also two small jets emerging from its nucleus as well as a very extended disc of neutral hydrogen, far larger than the galaxy itself, all these features suggesting a gas-rich galaxy collided and merged with it 1 billion years ago producing all the above features.
A scale image of NGC 1052 and its satellite galaxies is available at the reference.

Central black hole

NGC 1052 hosts a rapidly rotating supermassive black hole with a mass of 154 million Solar mass| with a large magnetic field of between 0.02 and 8.3 Tesla, which, according to PhD student Anne-Kathrin Baczko, the leader of the team that made this discovery, provides enough magnetic energy to power the previously mentioned twin relativistic jets.
The location of this black hole is the most precisely known in the universe, with the exception of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole found at the heart of our own galaxy.