NGC 7016

NGC 7016 is an elliptical galaxy located about 480 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Capricornus. NGC 7016's calculated velocity is 11,046 km/s. The galaxy has an estimated diameter of about 160 thousand light years and was discovered by American astronomer Francis Preserved Leavenworth on July 8, 1885. It is also host to a supermassive black hole with an estimated mass of 1.4 billion M_☉.

Physical characteristics

NGC 7016 is one of two prominent radio galaxies in the galaxy cluster Abell 3744 along with the double galaxy system NGC 7018. These two galaxies form a pair in the central region of the cluster Abell 3744.
NGC 7016 is a Famaroff-Riley type I radio galaxy, with bent asymmetric jets. Lower-resolution radio data obtained from observations from the VLA, show a very long, bent extension of the jet on the left side of the galaxy which forms a tendril structure. On the counterjet side there is extreme looping, forming a feature referred to as the “swirl.” It is thought that this swirl which runs into an X-ray cavity produced by NGC 7018, is the result of the jet colliding with the radio plasma from NGC 7018 and as a result of an interaction with a wake of gas left by the motion of NGC 7018 and its companion galaxy through the cluster.