AAO image reference AAT 7. « Previous || Next »
Top left is NE. Image width is about 16 arcmin
Image and text © 1987-2002, Anglo-Australian Observatory, photograph by David Malin.
Centaurus A is a most unusual galaxy. The circular, uniformly bright portion is composed of several thousand million stars, most of them old and yellowish. The galaxy is girded by a dense dust lane which obscures and reddens the light of stars behind it. Some younger, blue stars can be seen at the edges of the dust cloud. One of the nearer galaxies, 13 million light years away, Centaurus A is the most powerful nearby radio source and is also a copious source of X- and gamma rays as well as visible and infrared radiation. The curious green star in the dust lane is because the blue and green-light plates were taken when supernova 1986g had just appeared, while the red-light plate was taken a year later when the supernova had faded.
This galaxy has a huge, faint halo of stars seen in this very deep image made using special photographic techniques.
Entry from NGC 2000.0 (R.W. Sinnott, Ed.) © Sky Publishing Corporation, 1988:
NGC 5128 Gx 13 25.5 -43 01 s Cen 18.2 7.0 !!, vB, vL, vmE 122deg , bifidRelated Images
AAT 7a. Centaurus A, NGC 5128 (wide field)
AAT 52. Detail in the dust lane of NGC 5128
UKS 32. The field of NGC 5128 (Centaurus A, landscape format)
UKS 32a. The field of NGC 5128 (Centaurus A, portrait format)
n5128_d NGC 5128, deep image
n5128_ud NGC 5128, ultra-deep image
For other details of photographic exposure, search technical table by AAT reference number.
More data about this galaxy is accessible from the hotlinked NGC name and is reproduced
with permission from the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED).