APOD: 2020 February 22 - Central Centaurus A

Good afternoon, Rallypoint. Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) is titled "Central Centaurus A." A mere 11 million light-years away, Centaurus A is the closest active galaxy to planet Earth. A region spanning about 8,500 light-years, including the galaxy's center (upper left), is framed in this sharp Hubble Space telescope close-up. The center of the galaxy contains a supermassive black hole with a mass equivalent to 55 million solar masses, which ejects beams of ionised matter accelerated close to the speed of light along the polar axis of the black hole. These beams, called relativistic jets, are responsible for X-ray and radio wavelength emissions that we can detect and measure. The X-ray jets of Centaurus A (also known as NGC 5128) are thousands of light-years long, while the radio jets are over a million light-years long. The galaxy was discovered on 29 April 1826 by James Dunlop during a survey at the Parramatta Observatory in Sydney, Australia (Hi Cynthia Croft!).