esahubble_opo9814f May 14th, 1998
Credit: E.J. Schreier, (STScI) and NASA/ESA
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. The disk feeds material to presumably an inner, unresolved accretion disk that is made up of gas entrapped by the black hole. The red blobs near the disk are glowing gas clouds which have been heated up and ionized by the powerful radiation from the active nucleus.
Provider: Hubble Space Telescope | ESA
Image Source: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/opo9814f/
Curator: ESA/Hubble, Garching bei München, Germany
Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Detailed color mapping information coming soon...
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