Photo # 1 (Apr 2010)

ACTIVE GALAXY ALPHA CENTAURUS

As I passed into the second light, the awareness came to me that I had just transcended the truth. Those are the best words I have for it, but I will try to explain. As I passed into the second light, I expanded beyond the first light. I found myself in a profound stillness, beyond all silence. I could see or perceive FOREVER, beyond infinity. I was in the void. I was in pre-creation, before the Big Bang. I had crossed over the beginning of time - the first word – the first vibration. I was in the eye of creation. I felt as if I was touching the face of God. It was not a religious feeling. Simply I was at one with absolute life and consciousness. When I say that I could see or perceive forever, I mean that I could experience all of creation generating itself. It was without beginning and without end.

- Mellen-Thomas Benedict
   A Near-Death Experience

Credit: X-ray - NASA, CXC, R.Kraft (CfA), et al.;
Radio - NSF, VLA, M.Hardcastle (U Hertfordshire) et al.;
Optical - ESO, M.Rejkuba (ESO-Garching) et al.

A mere 11 million light-years away, Centaurus A is a giant elliptical galaxy - the closest active galaxy to Earth. This remarkable composite view of the galaxy combines image data from the x-ray ( Chandra), optical(ESO), and radio(VLA) regimes. Centaurus A's central region is a jumble of gas, dust, and stars in optical light, but both radio and x-ray telescopes trace a remarkable jet of high-energy particles streaming from the galaxy's core. The cosmic particle accelerator's power source is a black hole with about 10 million times the mass of the Sun coincident with the x-ray bright spot at the galaxy's center. Blasting out from the active galactic nucleus toward the upper left, the energetic jet extends about 13,000 light-years. A shorter jet extends from the nucleus in the opposite direction. Other x-ray bright spots in the field are binary star systems with neutron stars or stellar mass black holes. Active galaxy Centaurus A is likely the result of a merger with a spiral galaxy some 100 million years ago.

What we see depends on how we look at it. Just as we can use various instruments and filters to obtain different images of the stars and galaxies, so can we examine our inner universe through various channels of perception. Is one of our perceptions real and another false? Or can we choose which perceptions and which realities we hold to be real? And which is more real than the other?
                                               - Dan Benor, MD