... Astronomers have used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to probe the core of the nearest active galaxy to Earth, Centaurus A. Hubble's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer was used to peer past the dust to discover a tilted disk of hot gas at the galaxy's center (white bar running diagonally across image center). This 130 light-year diameter disk encircles a suspected black hole which may be one billion times the mass of our Sun. ... Centaurus A (NGC 5128) Fast Facts . ...