Credit: NASA/CXC/H.Feng et al.

Is it a spooky jack-o-lantern, a ghost, or some other sort of specter? Turns out it's nothing scary at all - unless you are afraid of black holes possibly crashing into each other. This is, in fact, an image of the core of M87, a galaxy in the constellation of Virgo. Scientists have specially processed Chandra's X-ray data to reveal the presence of what they believe to be three rings associated with the galaxy's core and jet. If these rings are real, then scientists will need to come up with more than a ghost story to explain them. One possible explanation for the triple-ring structure is the merger of two spinning, supermassive black holes.

CXC Home | Search | Help | Image Use Policy | Latest Images | Privacy | Accessibility | Glossary | Q&A

 Photo |  Press |  Blog |  More Feeds

[News by email: Chandra Digest]
[Contact us: cxcpub@cfa.harvard.edu]

Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA
Phone: 617.496.7941 Fax: 617.495.7356

Operated for NASA by SAO
This site was developed with funding from NASA under Contract NAS8-03060.

Revised: June 04, 2022