<p>The new image shows a region less than 4.2 light-years across, less than the distance between our sun and the nearest star. Radio-emitting features as small as 15 lightdays can be seen, making this the highest-resolution view of galactic jets ever made.<br /><br />The team targeted Centaurus A, a nearby galaxy with a supermassive black hole weighing 55 million times the sun's mass. Also known as NGC 5128, Cen A is located 12 million light-years away in the constellation Centaurus and is one of the first celestial radio sources identified with a galaxy.<br /><br />Seen in radio waves, Cen A is one of the biggest and brightest objects in the sky, nearly 20 times the apparent size of a full moon. This is because the visible galaxy lies nestled between a pair of giant radio-emitting lobes, each nearly a million light-years long. <br /><br />Using an intercontinental array of nine radio telescopes, the scientists were able to effectively zoom into the galaxy's innermost realm.<br /><br />"Advanced computer techniques allow us to combine data from the individual telescopes to yield images with the sharpness of a single giant telescope, one nearly as large as Earth itself," said Roopesh Ojha at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt.<br /><br />The findings are to appear in an upcoming edition of the 'Astronomy and Astrophysics' journal.</p>
<p>The new image shows a region less than 4.2 light-years across, less than the distance between our sun and the nearest star. Radio-emitting features as small as 15 lightdays can be seen, making this the highest-resolution view of galactic jets ever made.<br /><br />The team targeted Centaurus A, a nearby galaxy with a supermassive black hole weighing 55 million times the sun's mass. Also known as NGC 5128, Cen A is located 12 million light-years away in the constellation Centaurus and is one of the first celestial radio sources identified with a galaxy.<br /><br />Seen in radio waves, Cen A is one of the biggest and brightest objects in the sky, nearly 20 times the apparent size of a full moon. This is because the visible galaxy lies nestled between a pair of giant radio-emitting lobes, each nearly a million light-years long. <br /><br />Using an intercontinental array of nine radio telescopes, the scientists were able to effectively zoom into the galaxy's innermost realm.<br /><br />"Advanced computer techniques allow us to combine data from the individual telescopes to yield images with the sharpness of a single giant telescope, one nearly as large as Earth itself," said Roopesh Ojha at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt.<br /><br />The findings are to appear in an upcoming edition of the 'Astronomy and Astrophysics' journal.</p>