NGC 5128

Fr. José Funes, SJ and Sanae Akiyama

NGC 5128 

Composite of visible and infrared digital images; the stellar body of the galaxy is shown in blue and emission of the ionized gas in red. 

The elliptical galaxy NGC 5128 (also known as Centaurus A) is the nearest giant elliptical galaxy to us; its distance is only 12 millions light-years away.  It is also the nearest active galactic nucleus, hosting both a supermassive black hole of 100 million solar masses and a powerful radio source.  Furthermore, NGC 5128 is the nearest galaxy with shells; it contains a central dust lane, and boasts a bimodal populous system of 1700 globular clusters and a hundred active star forming regions along its dust lane.