Astro-image of the day: wild galaxy Centaurus A

[mckitterick]

Here's a seriously cool shot of a nearby active galaxy. It's considered "active" because it radiates not only in light but also radio, X-ray, and gamma-ray. Young star clusters, gigantic gas clouds, and dark dust lanes surround the central region of Centaurus A, the closest active galaxy, only 10 million light-years away:

Click the image to see the story.

This and other Hubble images show disks of matter spiraling into a black hole a billion times the mass of the Sun. Centaurus A seems to be the result of a galactic collision, and the central black hole is consuming the remains of those two long-destroyed galaxies.

Best,
Chris