Chandra Release - March 12, 2007

Visual Description: Bootes Field

 A wide-field panorama from the Chandra X-ray Observatory reveals more than a thousand supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies, some up to several billion times more massive than the sun. This survey, taken in a region of the Bootes constellation involved 126 separate Chandra exposures of 5,000-seconds each, making it the largest contiguous field ever obtained by the observatory. At 9.3 square degrees, it is over 40 times larger than the full Moon seen in the night sky, which is also shown in this graphic for scale. In this image, the red represents low-energy X-rays, green shows the medium range, and blue the higher energy X-rays.The image is dominated by a background of black with very brightly colored spots densely scattered throughout. These bright spots resemble packs of holiday lights dumped on a black table.