Centaurus A

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The European Southern Observatory put this excellent image of Centaurus A up on their site and they have some wallpaper sizes too, check them out here.  Be sure to click on the image and look for the areas of star formation, that will look like clusters of blue stars.

This is on my list of things to see, problem is, I’ll never see it from here.  Gotta go south for this one.

SEDS has a lot of information about Centaurus A, have a look.

The caption from the ESO page:

Centaurus A is our nearest giant galaxy, at a distance of about 13 million light-years in the southern constellation of Centaurus, and as such, it is one of the most extensively studied objects in the southern sky. It is an elliptical galaxy, currently merging with a companion spiral galaxy, resulting in areas of intense star formation and making it one of the most spectacular objects in the sky. Centaurus A hosts a very active and highly luminous central region, caused by the presence of a supermassive black hole with a mass of about 100 million solar masses (see ESO 04/01), and is the source of strong radio and X-ray emission. Thick dust layers almost completely obscure the galaxy’s centre. This image is based on data acquired with the 1.5-metre Danish telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile, through three filters (B, V, R).