Chandra Release - April 12, 2007

Visual Description: NGC 1365

  The image features an X-ray and optical image of a spiral galaxy named NGC 1365.  The dominant colors in the image are purple and blue, as well as pale gold and grey.  The structure of NGC 1365 is that of a barred spiral galaxy, facing the viewer.  It is a type of spiral galaxy with a central bar-shaped structure made up of stars and gas. Chandra observations (purple and blue) of the central region NGC 1365 are pulled out to an inset in the lower right from the full field optical image (grey and gold).  Chandra captured a remarkable eclipse of the supermassive black hole at the galaxy center. A dense cloud of gas passed in front of the black hole, which blocked high-energy X-rays from material close to the black hole. This serendipitous alignment allowed astronomers to measure the size of the disk of material around the black hole, a relatively tiny structure on galactic scales. The Chandra image contains a bright X-ray source in the middle, which reveals the position of the supermassive black hole. The optical view of the galaxy is from the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope and shows the context of the Chandra data.