Centaurus A’s ejections

Vikas Chander, taken from Observatorio El Sauce in the Río Hurtado Valley, Chile

Just 12 million light-years away, Centaurus A (NGC 5128) is the nearest active galaxy to us, with a supermassive black hole at its core spitting material back out into the intergalactic medium. Famously, these outflows can be seen in radio emission as enormous lobes on either side of the galaxy. However, this Hα/OIII/LRGB image taken from the Atacama Desert in Chile with a robotic 24-inch scope (and nearly 24 hours of exposure) gives a detailed view of ejections of matter in visible light at bottom right.