July 2026 marks four years since NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) images were first revealed to the general public, marking a new era for astronomy. To celebrate this anniversary of the most powerful space telescope ever launched, NASA has released a stunning image of the strangely shaped galaxy called Centaurus A.
Located around 11 million light-years away, Centaurus A owes its unusual structure to a collision between two galaxies around 2 billion years ago. This merger provided the galaxy with an abundance of gas and dust, the raw material for intense star formation. It also supplied the supermassive black hole at the heart of this galaxy with an abundant supply of the same matter to feed upon and power a bright and violent central region, or active galactic nucleus (AGN), as that central area blasts out powerful, high-speed jets of plasma.
Though this galaxy is much closer to us than many of the early galaxies that the JWST has studied in its four years of operations, that doesn't mean it's any less useful. In fact, with its ultra-sensitive infrared vision, the JWST has been able to peer into the heart and inner workings of Centaurus A like no telescope that has gone before.
