Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of
our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief
explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2001 August 16
Explanation: Its core hidden from optical view by a thick lane
of dust, the giant elliptical galaxy Centaurus A was among the
first objects observed by the orbiting Chandra X-ray
Observatory. Astronomers were not disappointed, as Centaurus A's
appearance in x-rays makes its classification as an active
galaxy easy to appreciate. Perhaps the most striking feature of
this Chandra false-color x-ray view is the jet, 30,000 light-
years long. Blasting toward the upper left corner of the
picture, the jet seems to arise from the galaxy's bright central
x-ray source -- suspected of harboring a black hole with a
million or so times the mass of the Sun. Centaurus A is also
seen to be teeming with other individual x-ray sources and a
pervasive, diffuse x-ray glow. Most of these individual sources
are likely to be neutron stars or solar ma