Centaurus A

Centaurus A (NGC 5128) is the fifth brightest galaxy in the sky, famous for the dust lane across its middle and a giant jet blasting away from the supermassive black hole at its centre. It is an active galaxy about 12 million light years from Earth.

The dark band harbours large amounts of gas, dust and young stars. Bright young star clusters appear at the upper-right and lower-left edges of the band along with the red glow of star-forming clouds of hydrogen, whilst some isolated dust clouds are silhouetted against the stellar background. These features, and the prominent radio emission, are strong evidence that Centaurus A is the result of a merger between two galaxies. The dusty band is probably the mangled remains of a spiral galaxy in the process of being ripped apart by the gravitational pull of the giant elliptical galaxy.