Scientists have captured a surprising new picture of a large galaxy ringed by dust filaments.
In the picture, Centaurus A, which is situated greater than 12 million light-years away from Earth within the southern constellation Centaurus (the centaur), ripples throughout space. The galaxy, which was first recognized in 1826, is among the many greatest studied within the southern sky as a result of it’s so vivid and comparatively near Earth.
In the picture, though stars glow, swaths of the galaxy are hidden by dust tendrils looping across the galaxy’s middle, the place a supermassive black hole containing 55 occasions the mass of the sun, hides and spews out a jet of matter that acts as a vivid supply of radio gentle.
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Among the dust are reddish hydrogen clouds, the place new stars are forming, and faint blue stars outlining the corners of the dust cloud. The galaxy’s unusual form is the results of a long-ago encounter with another galaxy that left Centaurus A shrouded in dust.
The picture comes from the Dark Energy Camera based mostly at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile and is a part of a challenge designed to determine quickly altering objects, like supernovas, occurring in key galaxies of the southern sky.
Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or comply with her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
