Chandra Release - February 25, 2015

Visual Description: NGC 2276

The image of NGC 2276 is a combination of X-ray and optical wavelengths with a pullout to a close up in radio light. The dominant colors in the image are purple and pink. NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory data (colored in pink) are overlaid on optical data in red, green, and blue from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Digitized Sky Survey. In this blended larger view, NGC 2276 appears as a distorted spiral galaxy with asymmetrical arms and a bright, off-center core, like a broken seashell.   The inset zooms in on an extraordinary object embedded in one of the spiral arms: NGC 2276-3c. This compact source emits radio waves (shown in red in the inset) and is identified as an intermediate-mass black hole—estimated to be about 50,000 times the mass of our Sun. In essence, this single image fuses multiple wavelengths to reveal both the galactic-scale turbulence shaping NGC 2276's distorted morphology and an extraordinary black hole quietly influencing its local environment - highlighting how multi-wavelength astronomy reveals hidden dynamics shaping the universe.