Overview
- NASA released combined NIRCam and MIRI images on July 7 that peel back dust to show Centaurus A’s core packed with millions of individual stars.
- Webb’s near- and mid-infrared cameras can see through dense dust that hid the center from Hubble and Spitzer, letting astronomers resolve star fields and fine dust structures.
- The data show a warped, rotating disk of warmer molecular hydrogen near the center alongside fast-moving ionized gas being driven outward by the active supermassive black hole.
- A pronounced S-shaped feature and delicate filaments stand out in the new images but their origin — merger debris, black-hole winds, or local star formation — remains under study.
- Because Centaurus A is about 11 million light-years away and retains evidence of a roughly 2-billion-year-old merger, researchers say follow-up kinematic analysis and modeling will use these Webb images as a nearby case study of collision-driven evolution and AGN feedback.