Chandra Release - November 22, 2004

Visual Description: SDSSp J1306

 The image of the quasar SDSSp J1306 showcases X-rays observed by Chandra (as an inset at bottom left) that have taken 12.7 billion light years to reach Earth. Surprisingly, in this quasar, which is seen as it was at an early epoch, the distribution of X-rays with energy – the X-ray spectrum -- is indistinguishable from that of nearby, older quasars. The Chandra image shows one main bright blue point of light, the quasar. A smaller object in the upper left of the image is a foreground galaxy. In the illustration, at center, there is a black hole, which resembles a dark circle with a bright puffy white ring around it. This ring is reminiscent of a cotton ball. Surrounding the black hole, there is a swirling mass of gas and dust, depicted in shades of orange and yellow. These colors are similar to those found in the sky during a sunrise or sunset. The swirling motion of the gas and dust resembles the movement of clouds in the sky, creating a sense of fluidity and dynamic energy within the space of the image. There are two streaks of light coming from the black hole that are known as a jet, a stream of charged particles that emanates from the black hole and travels millions of light-years into space. The illustration shows the process of how material from a large torus of gas and dust in the center of a galaxy is pulled toward a black hole. Most of the infalling gas is concentrated in a rapidly rotating disk, and a hot atmosphere or corona where temperatures can climb to billions of degrees. Collisions of low-energy optical, ultraviolet and X-ray photons from the disk with the hot electrons in the corona boost the energy of the photons up to the high-energy X-ray range.