James Webb Telescope uncovers hidden structures in galaxy Centaurus A

To mark four years of science operations, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope used its Near‑Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid‑Infrared Instrument (MIRI) to image the nearby active galaxy Centaurus A, about 11 million light‑years from Earth. The infrared observations pierced the thick dust lanes that obscured the galaxy’s core in visible light, revealing a densely packed centre of millions of individual stars, warped dust filaments forming a parallelogram‑shaped band, and a distinctive S‑shaped feature near the nucleus.

The images also show warm hydrogen gas rotating around a supermassive black hole and fast‑moving ionised gas being expelled by the black hole’s activity. Together with the dust structures, these data provide a detailed view of the galaxy’s violent past: a collision with another galaxy roughly two billion years ago that left the distorted disk of gas and dust still feeding star formation and the black hole.

The new views demonstrate Webb’s ability to resolve individual stars and gas dynamics in a galaxy that was previously only partially visible with Hubble or Spitzer, offering astronomers a richer laboratory for studying galaxy evolution, black‑hole feedback, and the aftermath of major galactic mergers.