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Circinus Galaxy Center (Artist’s Concept)

An artist’s illustration showing the center of the Circinus galaxy, including its supermassive black hole, dusty torus, and superheated jets of matter. The center of supermassive black hole, slightly left of center, is bright white. Two slim, bright green jets of matter shoot out from the black hole at 1 o’clock and 7 o’clock, and hit the edges of the frame. A donut-shaped, orangish-pinkish ring of dust and gas, called a torus, surrounds the black hole. The disk is clumpy closer to the center and more diffuse at the edges. The torus, tilted at the same angle as the jets, is brighter and whiter closer to the black hole than at the edges. The words Artist’s Concept is in the lower right corner.

This artist’s concept depicts the central engine of the Circinus galaxy.

At the center is the supermassive black hole, shown as a bright, compact core. You don’t see the black hole itself, but the intense glow from material heating up as it spirals inward. Surrounding the center is a thick, donut-shaped disk of gas and dust (the torus). In Circinus, this torus, about 16 light-years across, is optically dense, meaning visible light can’t penetrate.

The illustration emphasizes that this dusty structure is brightest close to the black hole, matching the newest finding from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope that most of the light is coming from hot dust feeding the black hole rather than being blown away.

The narrow, bright beams shooting outward represent jets, streams of energized material launched perpendicular to the disk.

The soft, hazy glow around everything represents the surrounding galaxy and diffuse material.

  • Release Date
    January 13, 2026
  • Science Release
    NASA’s Webb Delivers Unprecedented Look Into Heart of Circinus Galaxy
    Read the release
  • Credit
    Artwork: NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI)

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Related Images & Videos

Image shows a large spiral galaxy that that has a bright white center, with several lanes of reddish-brown dust and gas in between faint white arms. The galaxy takes up the center third of the frame. There are several thousand stars, some with diffraction spikes, scattered around the image. This image is labeled Hubble. A small box outlining an area at the center of the galaxy leads a pullout square at the top right. The image, labeled Webb, is dark with a white glowing oval at the center.

Circinus Galaxy (Hubble and Webb)

This image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope shows the Circinus galaxy. A close-up of its core from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows the inner face of the hole of the donut-shaped disk of gas disk glowing in infrared light. The outer ring appears as dark spots.

Image titled u201cJames Webb Space Telescope; Circinus Galaxy, ESO 97-G13,u201d with compass arrows, scale bar, and color key. Image shows a large spiral galaxy that that has a bright white center, with several lanes of reddish-brown dust and gas in between faint white arms. This image is labeled Hubble. A small box outlining an area at the center of the galaxy leads a pullout square at the top right. The image, labeled Webb, is dark with a white glowing oval at the center. At the bottom left are compass arrows indicating the orientation of the image on the sky. The east arrow points toward 7 ou2019clock. The north arrow points in the 11 ou2019clock direction. At the bottom right of each image is a scale bar. The Hubble one is labeled 1,300 light-years and 400 parsecs and is one eighth the image. The Webb label is 2 pcs and is 1 fifth the inset image. Below the image is a color key showing which filters were used to create the image and which visible-light color is assigned to each filter.

Circinus Galaxy (Hubble and Webb Compass Image)

This image shows two views of the Circinus galaxy, one captured by the Hubble Space Telescope and the other by the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRISS (Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph. It shows compass arrows, scale bar, and color key for reference.

Telescope image including stars on the night sky and splotches of pink. Thin blue lines connect the actual stars of several constellations.

Circinus Galaxy Zoom

This zoom-in video shows the location of the Circinus galaxy on the sky. It begins with a ground-based photo of the constellation Circinus by the late astrophotographer Akira Fujii. The video closes in on the Circinus galaxy, using views from the Digitized Sky Survey and the Dark...

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Details

Last Updated
Jan 12, 2026
Location
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Contact
Media

Laura Betz
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland
laura.e.betz@nasa.gov

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