Chandra Release - May 11, 2017

Visual Description: CXO J101527.2+625911

The image is an illustration (right) and a pair of astronomical images (upper left) that features CXO J101527.2+62591. The dominant colors in the image are orange and blue. The structure of the black hole's disk in the illustration is spiral shaped and slightly warped. Using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes, astronomers found a possible "recoiling" black hole. This black hole, which contains about 160 million solar masses, may have formed and then been set in motion by the collision of two smaller black holes (depicted in the artist's illustration). The upper left inset image is from the Hubble data (a blue extended source), which shows two bright points near the middle of the galaxy. One of them is located at the center of the galaxy and the other is located about 3,000 light years away from the center. The latter source shows the properties of a growing supermassive black hole and its position matches that of a bright X-ray source detected with Chandra (right image, a pixellated orange source).