Despite their scientific importance, surveys of novae in distant, rich clusters of galaxies have not been very popular among astronomers. Major reasons are probably the inherent observational difficulties and the comparatively low rates of discovery. Many dark dust clouds and lanes are visible. Some of the star-like objects in the field are globular clusters of stars that belong to the galaxy. The image quality of this composite is about 0.9 arcsec.
North is up and East is left.
This galaxy is of special interest in connection with current attempts to establish an accurate distance scale in the Universe. A precise measurement of the distance to NGC 1316 may therefore provide an independent calibration of the intrinsic brightness of these supernovae. The new observations were performed during 8 nights distributed over the period from January 9 to 19, 2000. The decline of the brightness of the objects is obvious. They were identified because of the typical change of brightness over the observation period, cf.