Chandra Release - July 16, 2008

Visual Description: NGC 4649

This X-ray and optical image features the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 4649. The galaxy is colored pink graduating to blue-purple, with a tiny bright light in the center.  The image is very smooth with the pink to purple colors filling up the entire view.  This is a composite image of data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (shown in pink) and Hubble Space Telescope (blue-purple) of NGC 4649. Although NGC 4649 contains one of the biggest black holes in the local Universe, there are no overt signs of its presence because the black hole is in a dormant state. The lack of a bright central point in either the X-ray or optical images shows that the supermassive black hole does not appear to be rapidly pulling in material towards its event horizon, nor generating copious amounts of light as it grows. Also, the very smooth appearance of the X-ray image shows that the hot gas producing the X-rays has not been disturbed recently by outbursts from a growing black hole.