Chandra Release - November 19, 2002

Visual Description: NGC 6240

This Chandra X-ray Observatory image features a galaxy named NGC 6240. This galaxy is predominantly orange and blue in color, with some green and yellow areas scattered around the core of the image. The Chandra image shows a butterfly-shaped galaxy that is the product of the collision of two smaller galaxies, and reveals that the central region of the galaxy (shown in an inset) contains not one, but two active giant black holes.  The inset shows two blue blobby sources almost touching with the smaller dimmer source at the top at 11 o’clock, and the larger brighter source below it at 5 o’clock. Over the course of the next few hundred million years, the two supermassive black holes, which are about 3000 light years apart, will drift toward one another and merge to form one larger supermassive black hole.