The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
Go to topicThank you for liking
You have already liked this page, you can only like it once!
Herschel image of Centaurus A combined from data from the Photoconductor Array Camera and Spectrometer (PACS) at 100 microns and Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver (SPIRE) instruments at 250, 350, and 500 microns reveals spectacular detail. The PACS image glows almost golden yellow in the core of the galaxy, where intense star formation is taking place. This parallelogram shaped region of dust can be best described using galaxy formation models where a flat spiral galaxy collides with an elliptical galaxy, and becomes warped in the process. The SPIRE data shown in red shows the jets and surrounding clouds. The observations also reveal for the first time two new clouds at the SPIRE wavelengths which are co-aligned with the jets, at distances of around 50 000 light years from the centre of the galaxy. These are visible only due to Herschel’s extreme sensitivity to emissions from the cold dust at temperatures not far above absolute zero.