"Between our Local Group and the supercluster center lies the Centaurus A Group. Its biggest galaxy is an elliptical giant blasting out radio waves, the sign of a recent meal. Just 500 million years ago, Centaurus A absorbed a spiral galaxy that it’s still digesting."
Our Local Group is a speck in this galactic metropolis. We’re in the supercluster suburbs—an offshoot of a powerful, centrally located cluster, also named Virgo. Our neighbor, the tiny Maffei 1 group, was kicked out of our pack after tangling with Andromeda.
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Cigar Galaxy
The Leo Group is ringed by a colossal band of frigid gas. An ongoing quest is to find gas that’s primordial—never part of a star. But evidence proves this cloud blew off from two colliding galaxies a billion years ago. The search for virgin gas continues.
Southern Pinwheel Galaxy
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Magnetar
The Cigar Galaxy has a magnetar, an extreme neutron star with a magnetic field a trillion times stronger than the Sun’s. In one-tenth of a second, it emitted a gamma-ray burst (GRB). The GRB made news as the first magnetar flare detected outside the Milky Way.
Centaurus A Group Rank 3
The Spiral's Ghosts
They shine in the belly of the Centaurus A Galaxy. These ghosts of a spiral galaxy digested long ago are veils of dark dust that glow with orange gas and pop with brilliant blue star clusters. Nearby, the active galactic nucleus (AGN) belches out ionized gas.