For a bit of fun I thought I would try and approximate what NGC 1365 would look like if we were to see it face on. First though, assuming NGC 1365 is a circular barred spiral galaxy, what would its tilt angle be, defining 0 degrees as face on and 90 degrees as edge on. The angle can be calculated from Cosine (angle) = short axis dimension/ long axis dimension.
I used the ruler function in Photoshop to estimate the relative lengths of the axes. The calculated tilt angle is 54 degrees. Yes, it is closer to edge on than face on! I then used the distort function in Photoshop to stretch the image in the direction required to make it circular. There was nothing scientific about this, just my judgement as to when it looked round.
The result can be see in the mouse-over (Version B). I didn't take care to fix the stars within the galaxy which now become ellipses but I think this gives a fair approximation as to what the galaxy would look like face on. What I found particularly interesting is that a couple of the spiral arms on the far side of the galaxy exhibit Vorontsov-Velyaminov rows. To quote
Gary Imm's commentary on his image of M101 "these are straight segments of otherwise curved galaxy arms, connected by a constant angle. Straight segments are hard to explain using gravitational theory. These rows are believed to be caused by large-scale density waves although I don't understand the exact mechanism." To me it wasn't clear that these arms were so straight until I undertook this exercise.
So if NGC 1365 is 56 million light years away, how far would we need to travel to see it face on at a distance, also of 56 million light years? According to my calculations the answer is 51 million light years. See my trigonometry to calcualte that (Version C)
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