Centaurus A Is A Sexy Ball of Dust!

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Alright, so it’s actually an elliptical galaxy. Whatever its shape,  Centaurus A is suffering and it’s making it all the prettier. After recently colliding with another galaxy, it’s been absorbing all sorts of gorgeous galactic debris, giving it the look it now has.

Bad Astronomy:

In its defense, Cen A apparently suffered a recent collision with another galaxy, absorbing the intruder’s stars, gas, and dust. As you can see in the image here, the dust cuts across the bigger elliptical galaxy’s middle like a Texas cowboy’s belt, but with considerably more intricate scroll work. In the big image above you can also see the pink/red regions where stars are forming, lighting up the gas around them. The bright star in the middle is in our own galaxy, and happens to be in the way of our view of Cen A. Think of it as an intergalactic photobomb.

Another cool thing about this image is the number of sub-images that went into it. It’s a combination of no fewer than seven filtered images! Usually there are only three – one each for a red, green, and blue filter – which, when combined, mimic the way our eyes see color. But this image combines light from the ultraviolet all the way to the infrared, including some filters that only let through a very narrow slice of color, which sequesters out the light from hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur – astrophysically interesting elements. They can tell us the density, temperature, and other physical properties of the gas emitting them.

Pretty cool! And don’t forget to smile, hell yeah we’re photobombing another galaxy!