Chandra Release - January 30, 2009

Visual Description: Centaurus A

The composite image features an active galaxy named Centaurus A. This galaxy is dominated by shades of pale blue and gold with grays on a dark background filled with white points of light. The galaxy's central region appears much brighter than its outer region.  Centaurus A is powered by a powerful supermassive black hole.  A prominent slightly puffy X-ray jet extending for 13,000 light years points to the upper left in the image, with a shorter, puffier "counterjet" aimed in the opposite direction. The structure of the image overall has a fat, warped baton shape with a large disk of material cutting across the center.  The jets of high-energy particles extend to the outer reaches of the galaxy, and numerous smaller black holes in binary star systems are sprinkled around.  The image combines submillimeter data (colored gold) from the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope and X-ray data (pale blue) from the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Visible light data from the Wide Field Imager on the Max-Planck/ESO 2.2 m telescope shows the dust lane in the galaxy and background stars. The X-ray jet in the upper left extends for about 13,000 light years away from the black hole. The APEX data shows that material in the jet is travelling at about half the speed of light.