Chandra Release - May 12, 2022

Visual Description: Supermassive Black Hole 

Today's release features a composite image of the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Pointing to the middle of the main image is an inset image of the region around the "event horizon," the boundary of the black hole from which nothing can escape. 

In the main image, golden orange specks of light and tendrils of neon purple and blue clouds are set against a black background. The oranges and purples were captured in infrared light by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The blues represent data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. At the heart of the main image are several bright white dots, including one that contains the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, known as Sagittarius A*. 

Emerging from this bright white dot is an inset image, housed at our upper right. This image is from the Event Horizon Telescope. It shows a bright, orange ring with three golden yellow spots and a red aura. This is gas around the event horizon of the galaxy's supermassive black hole. This bright ring is formed by light bending in the intense gravity around the black hole at the center, which has a mass some 4 million times that of our Sun.