AAS #9: Black hole jet of doom from Cen A

Centaurus A is a nearby galaxy which is bit of mess. Actually, it's an incredible mess. 12 million light years away, it looks at first like an elliptical galaxy, an unassuming football of billions of stars. A closer look reveals a dark dust lane across the middle, which is our first hint things are amiss: ellipticals tend not to have very much dust, but Cen A has it in bucketloads (as you can see in the picture on the left, courtesy Chandra and AURA/NOAO/NSF). Cen A has been known to harbor a central supermassive black holes -- all big galaxies, including our own, have one. But Cen A's is active: it is currently feeding off gas and dust, gobbling down huge amounts of matter. This material forms a gigantic flattened disk as it swirls around the hole. This disk is under the influence of a witch's brew of forces magnetic, ...