Ngc 1097  galaxy is located 50 million light-years away in the constellation of Fornax. It is a spiral barred galaxy like our Milky Way, with long, spindly arms of stars. It is of a special class of galaxy known as a Seyfert galaxy (those that produce a specific type of spectrum and are thought to contain active galactic nuclei with super massive black holes) The core of the galaxy is a huge black hole surrounded by a ring of stars (not resolved in this image as infrared filters and a large aperture would be needed).
The black hole is estimated to be around 100 million times the mass of our sun, exuding gas and dust. Our Milky Way's central black hole is estimated to be within a mass of a few million suns in comparison.

Of note in this image are the faint jets..Jet1 @ the 11 O'clock position and Jet 2 @ 10 O'clock. These jets are thought to be the remnants of a smaller galaxy interaction many years ago.

 Conditions- Average to poor seeing and transparency when taking the lum on the 24 & 26 due to upper level smoke haze from fires that have been burning in and around Alice Springs (due north). When taking the colour set, the evening was also average, but had settled down from previous nights.