Data from TelescopeLive.
This nearby galaxy (12 million light years away) is one of the closest galactic radio sources to us. The 55 million solar mass super massive black hole at the center of this galaxy is feeding and expelling jets of particles from its top and bottom axis. These "relativistic jets" of charged particles travel close to the speed of light and emit radio and x-rays. While we can't see these jets in visible light, the core of this feeding, active galactic nucleus is very bright.
Credit for original work: GodColour composite image of Centaurus A, revealing the lobes and jets emanating from the active galaxy’s central black hole. This is a composite of images obtained with three instruments, operating at very different wavelengths. The 870-micron submillimetre data, from LABOCA on APEX, are shown in orange. X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory are shown in blue. Visible light data from the Wide Field Imager (WFI) on the MPG/ESO 2.2 m telescope located at La Silla, Chile, show the background stars and the galaxy’s characteristic dust lane in close to "true colour".ESO/WFI (Optical); MPIfR/ESO/APEX/A.Weiss et al. (Submillimetre); NASA/CXC/CfA/R.Kraft et al. (X-ray) -
http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso0903a/
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