[madbadgalaxyman (Robert)]

Thanks for the link, Suzy.

There are two main public Hubble Space Telescope websites, of which the european site is:

http://www.spacetelescope.org

This site is the best of the two main public sites for easy downloading of very large and very high resolution versions of the publicly released HST images.
For instance, you will find an absolutely gigantic version of the N5128 image at this site.
Also, this site has a very good search engine, so you can find HST images of specific objects.

For comparison purposes, and "just for fun", I include the GALEX satellite (Far Ultraviolet plus Near Ultraviolet) image of N5128, which was downloaded from the GalexView virtual telescope on the internet.



The GALEX far-ultraviolet band is extremely sensitive to areas of recent formation of massive and hot stars....it isolates even relatively modest areas where O and B stars have formed.
(see the GalexView "How to" in this forum)


The primary large-scale dark lane of N5128, in "real space", is essentially a rather distorted Barred Spiral galaxy that slices through the short axis of NGC 5128.
(in fact , in three dimensions, the spiral is arrayed along the shortest axis of the elliptical galaxy...... which is shaped like a triaxial ellipsoid; as was found in modelling by Kenneth C. Freeman and colleagues).
While the hot & massive & blue stars in the Dark Lane do look fairly modest in optical imaging,, they blaze "like floodlights" in the GALEX far-ultraviolet band.