One of the things I love about nearby galaxies is the incredible amount of detail we can get when we aim our best telescopes at them. For proof, I offer this amazingly intricate Hubble portrait of Centaurus A:

Isn’t that breathtaking? [Click to galactinate and see it in magnificent detail.]

Cen A (as those of us in the know call it) is pretty close by as galaxies go, a mere 11 million light years distant. For scale, our own galaxy is 100,000 light years across, and Andromeda, the closest big spiral galaxy, is a hair under 3 million light years away.

Cen A is a bit of a mess. It’s an elliptical galaxy, which are usually giant cotton balls in space. Calm, quiet, and sedate, they generally possess very little gas and dust and don’t form stars.

Obviously, Cen A hasn’t been keeping up with the neighborhood association rulebook.

In its defense, Cen A apparently suffered a recent collision with another galaxy, absorbing the intruder’s stars, gas, and dust. As you can see in the image here, the dust cuts across the bigger elliptical galaxy’s middle like a Texas cowboy’s belt, but ...