My photo, taken in Namibia, shows the fifth brightest galaxy in the sky. It is already recognisable in binoculars as a faint patch of nebulosity and is known as Centaurus A. It is surrounded by a lot of dust, which envelops the galaxy as a dark strip. The curved shape was created by the fusion of an elliptical and a spiral galaxy. Centaurus A has an active galactic nucleus, the centre of which contains a massive black hole with around 55 million solar masses.
Centaurus A