Overview
- NASA released the new near‑ and mid‑infrared Webb images on Tuesday, July 7, 2026, as part of the telescope’s fourth year of science operations.
- The images resolve millions of individual stars in Centaurus A’s dust‑shrouded center, turning a fuzzy glow into a crowded stellar field that can be read for the galaxy’s history.
- Mid‑infrared data show a complex dusty morphology that includes a prominent warped central band and a previously highlighted S‑shaped feature whose origin remains undetermined.
- Early Webb spectroscopy and kinematic measurements detect warm molecular hydrogen in a rotating, distorted disk near the supermassive black hole and separate streams of gas moving outward, evidence of black‑hole feedback that can both trigger and suppress star formation.
- At about 11 million light‑years away, Centaurus A—shaped by a roughly 2‑billion‑year‑old merger—now serves as a local testbed for 'galactic archaeology' and for refining how mergers and active nuclei drive galaxy evolution.