Upper-left corner: a ground-based image of the galaxy looks like a bright-white ball of stars with a dark dust lane through its middle. A box outlines the area Hubble image. The rest of the image holds Hubble's view. A dusty streak stretches from the upper-right corner to the lower left. A background yellow-orange glow cuts through the dust.

Hubble: Centaurus A

The Hubble image (on the right), showing dust and stars near the center of Centaurus A, is a combination of visible-light observations taken by the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 in 1997 and 1998. The green outline in the ground-based National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) image (upper left) shows the area covered by the Hubble image.

Credits: Ground-based image: NOAO; Hubble image: E.J. Schreier (STScI) and NASA; Team members: E.J. Schreier, A. Marconi, D. Axon, N. Caon, and D. Macchetto (STScI)