Credit: X-ray (NASA/CXC/Univ. of California Irvine/P.Humphrey et al.); Optical (NASA/STScI)

A composite image of data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (shown in purple) and Hubble Space Telescope (blue) shows the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 4649. By applying a new technique, scientists used Chandra data to measure the black hole at the galaxy's center to be about 3.4 billion times more massive than the Sun. The value from this X-ray technique is consistent with a more traditional method observing the motions of stars near the black hole in optical light. NGC 4649 is now one of only a handful of galaxies for which the mass of a supermassive black hole has been measured with two different methods.

Provider: Chandra X-ray Observatory

Image Source: http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2008/ngc4649/

Curator: Chandra X-ray Observatory, Cambridge, MA, USA

Image Use Policy: http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/image_use.html