A
super-massive black hole appears strangely dormant in this composite image by
the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope.
The
NGC 4649 galaxy contains one of the biggest black holes in the local universe,
but shows no obvious signs of rapidly sucking in material or generating large
amounts of light. The smoothness of the image indicates that the hot gas
producing the X-rays has not been disturbed by the growing black hole.
Astronomers
have to study the black hole more indirectly by measuring the temperature of
heated gas near the center of the galaxy. The gas gets compressed as
it settles near the black hole, eventually resulting in a temperature peak that
is proportional to the size of the black hole. As a result, scientists found
that the black hole’s mass is 3.4 billion times that of the sun.
— NASA/CXC/Univ. of California
Irvine/P.Humphrey et al and SPACE.com Staff
Credit: X-ray (NASA/CXC/Univ.
of California Irvine/P.Humphrey et al.); Optical (NASA/STScI)
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