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A Pair of Merging Black Holes (Artist’s Concept)

Artist's depiction of a pair of active black holes at the heart of two merging galaxies. One distant black hole is at upper left, and a foreground black hole is at lower right. The black holes are both surrounded by a yellow-orange accretion disk of hot gas. Some of the material is ejected along the spin axis of each black hole and resembles two pencil-thin blue jets, like a spindle through a record. The disk at lower right fills the corner of the image and is tilted to the left, with the jet pointing in the 11 o'clock direction. The disk at upper left is much smaller and tilted to the right, with the jet aimed at the 1 o'clock position. The background is filled with thousands of white stars and red clouds of gas and dust.

This is an artist's depiction of a pair of active black holes at the heart of two merging galaxies. They are both surrounded by an accretion disk of hot gas. Some of the material is ejected along the spin axis of each black hole. Confined by powerful magnetic fields, the jets blaze across space at nearly the speed of light as devastating beams of energy.

 

  • Release Date
    September 9, 2024
  • Science Release
    NASA’s Hubble, Chandra Find Supermassive Black Hole Duo
  • Credit
    NASA, ESA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)

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  • Full res "Artist's Concept" watermarked (For Display), 3840 × 2160
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  • Full Res (for Display), 3840 × 2160
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  • Half Res (for Display), 1920 × 1080
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  • Full Res (For Print), 3840 × 2160
    tif (15.86 MB)

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Details

Last Updated
Mar 28, 2025
Contact
Media

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov