Centaurus A

NGC 5128 - the 5th brightest galaxy in the sky

Image copyright: Allen Versfeld

Centaurus A is one of the gems of the southern skies, and one of the brightest galaxies visible from Earth. It is an active galaxy located about 12 million light yers from Earth. The product of a merger between two galaxies, Centaurus A has an unusual elliptical shape with an enormous meandering dust lane obscuring the centre. When viewed in radio wavelengths, it shines extremely brightly and appears larger than the full moon, thanks to the relativistic jets being ejected by the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s core.
Centaurus A was discovered in 1826 by James Dunlop, from his home in New South Wales, Australia.

Image captured over two nights, total integrated exposure time of 26 minutes
Captured through Celestron C8 with f/6.3 focal reducer
Canon EOS 1100d, driven in tethered mode by APT
158 x 10sec, ISO800 light frames
Processed in Iris: pre-processing with bias, dark and flat field images, stacked using COMPOSIT2 algorithm, colour balanced, levels set in logarithm mode.