Centaurius A (Jeff McClure)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Centaurus (Cen) · Contains: Centaurus A · HD116466 · NGC 5128

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Centaurius A

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Centaurius A

Centaurus A is a strange galaxy. It is, in terms of our universe, not too far from us, between 11-13 million light-years, in the Centaurus constellation, visible only from the southern hemisphere. What makes it strange is first, the intervening enormous dust cloud superimposed on it but even more impressive is what you cannot see in this visual light image. Centaurus A has a supermassive black hole at its center that masses about 55 million times the mass of our sun. As a result of the interaction of that black hole with the rest of the galaxy it is emitting an extremely powerful X-ray and radio signal and, at the same time, shooting a million-light-year long jet of superheated ions from its center at about 50% of the speed of light. The radiation emitted from the black hole and the jet is so intense that life would be impossible anywhere in the galaxy. One of the reasons it is generating such a strong radio and X-ray signal is that ionic jet converts interstellar clouds of molecular gas directly into energy as it hits them Space in our galaxy is mostly quite unfriendly to life but this is one galaxy total hostile to any know form of life.

As I am not in the southern hemisphere, this is not an image taken from my back yard. Instead, the data that ultimately became what you see was gathered using a Planewave CDK 24 telescope with a Finger Lakes Instruments PL 16803 camera mounted on a Paramount MX+ mount at the El Sauce Observatory owned by Telescope Live and is compiled of about 12 hours of exposures taken in late spring and early summer of 2020, 2021, and 2022. It is visual light frequencies using Luminance, Red, Green, and Blue filters and was calibrated, combined and processed using Astropixel Processor by me, Jeff McClure, in Salado Texas in 2023.

Please note: The following tables are updated every 24 hours.

Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	8264679
PixInsight job	66QGVJEKVUYKOS38P5T9W8G9VC2Z7WLI
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	13h25m35s.940
RA (top/left)	13h27m04s.107
RA (top/right)	13h24m04s.502
RA (bottom/right)	13h24m05s.278
RA (bottom/left)	13h27m06s.421

Dec (center)	-43°00′11″.52
Dec (top/left)	-42°45′08″.50
Dec (top/right)	-42°45′25″.81
Dec (bottom/right)	-43°15′11″.11
Dec (bottom/left)	-43°14′50″.11

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Centaurius A

Centaurius A

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Centaurius A

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