Chandra Release - September 20, 2026

Visual Description: Sagittarius A East  


This release features a composite image of a supermassive black hole and supernova remnant close to each other at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. In a packed galactic landscape such as this, it is often difficult to discern what light emanates from which object. For this image, astronomers used a special technique to separate the glowing X-ray sources. The result is a picture with distinct elements, and an overall look not unlike an impressionist oil painting with patches of diffused color.

 

At the heart of the image is a light purple cloud and a spiraling, bright yellow tangle. The purple cloud represents X-rays from the center of the supernova remnant, Sagittarius A East. Inside the bright yellow tangle is the supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*, which has the mass of 4-million suns. Surrounding the remnants of the exploded star and its black hole neighbor, is a neon red gas cloud with trails drifting toward our upper right. Here, red represents radio data from the NSF’s Very Large Array.

 

A faint, dark blue cloud, barely discernible when set against the blackness of space, begins at our upper left and exits the bottom of the frame. This is submillimeter-wavelength data from the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. Mottled, faint patches of forest green stretch across the image from our lower left to our upper right. These are lower-energy X-rays detected by Chandra that are possibly linked to past outbursts from Sagittarius A*.