Chandra Release - June 4, 2012

Visual Description: CID-42

This astronomical image features a very wide field view that includes many galaxies. Three small inset panels showing closeup views of a galaxy of particular interest in the center of the image stretch down the right side. This galaxy is very small and faraway and appears in the center of a faint sea of other galaxies, stars and dim dots of light. It is dominated by shades of blue, grey, and yellow and around it are faint dots of blue, orange, red and white. The galaxy at the center contains an X-ray source called CID-42. After combining data from several telescopes - including NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory - researchers believe CID-42 contains a massive black hole being ejected from its host galaxy at several million miles per hour.  The main panel is a wide-field image of CID-42 and its surroundings taken by the Canada-French-Hawaii Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope in optical light. The outlined box on the main panel represents a localized view of CID-42 that is shown in the three separate boxes on the right-hand side of the graphic. At the top is an image in blue-white from the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The X-ray emission is concentrated in a single source, corresponding to one of the two sources seen in deep observations by Hubble, which is shown in the middle inset box in yellow. The bottom inset shows how the X-rays align with the optical data in the two insets above.