Starburst Galaxies - Centaurus a (Paperback)

Chapters: Centaurus A. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 45. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Centaurus A - A Hubble Space Telescope (HST) image of the dust disk in front of the nucleus of Centaurus A. Credit: HST/NASA/ESA. This image of the central parts of Centaurus A reveals the parallelogram-shaped remains of a smaller galaxy that was gulped down about 200 to 700 million years ago. The image is based on data collected with the SOFI instrument on ESOs New Technology Telescope at La Silla. The original image, obtained by observing in the near-infrared through three different filters (J, H and K) was specially processed to look through the dust, providing a clear view of the centre. The field of view is about 4 x 4 arcminutes.Centaurus A may be described as having a peculiar morphology. As seen from Earth, the galaxy looks like a lenticular or elliptical galaxy with a superimposed dust lane. The peculiarity of this galaxy was first identified in 1847 by John Herschel, and the galaxy was included in the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies (published in 1966) as one of the best examples of a "disturbed" galaxy with dust absorption. The galaxy's strange morphology is generally recognized as the result of a merger between two smaller galaxies. The bulge of this galaxy is comprised mainly of evolved red stars. The dusty disk, however, has been the site of more recent star formation; over 100 star formation regions have been identified in the disk. One supernova has been detected in Centaurus A. The supernova, named SN 1986G, was discovered within the dark dust lane of the galaxy by R. Evans in 1986. It was later identified as a type Ia supernova, which forms when a white dwarf's mass grows large enough to ignite carbon fusion in its center, touching off a runaway thermonuclear reaction, as may ...More: http: //booksllc.net/?id=522868