Colliding Galaxies in the Visible and Infrared—Centaurus A

The infrared image is color-coded such that different colors represent different spectral ranges of the observations. Stars, which are bright at 3.6 microns, appear blue. The green indicates organic material in the dust from emissions at 8 microns. Thermal radiation at 24 microns coming from starlight-warmed dust particles is shown in red. When the dust (red) and organics (green) blend together, it appears as yellow in the image. The bright pink dots within the disk are star-forming regions where thermal emission from the warm dust dominates.