Black Hole Week 2023

May 1 to May 5 2023
Hubble shared new images of active galactic nuclei — extremely bright central regions of galaxies that host supermassive black holes — as NASA marked its annual Black Hole Week!

Bright-white galaxy stretching across the center of the frame from left to right. The galaxy's core is brightest at image center. Filaments of reddish-brown gas and dust follow the arc of the galaxy's curve. All on a black background dotted with stars.
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Black Hole Week 2023

A bright galaxy seen nearly edge on sits against a black background dotted with stars and distant galaxies. The center of the galaxy is extremely bright white in color. The brightness of the galaxy tapers off toward its outer edges. Dark dust filaments are s

Hubble Observes an In-between Galaxy

Lenticular galaxy, NGC 3489, has an extremely bright active galactic nucleus that emits radiation across the entire electromagnetic spectrum as its black hole devours material.

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Bright white, pink, and blue stars and gas, concentrated in the lower left of the frame. They spiral outward from the lower-left corner. Black background.

Hubble Gazes at the Home of an Enormous Black Hole

NGC 4395 is about 14 million light-years away. It is one of the closest and dimmest known Seyfert galaxies.

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Two blue-white, comma-shaped galaxies: at upper-right and lower-left of center. Streams of diffuse gas stretch between them. Areas of reddish-brown dust dot galaxy at left, less so on galaxy at right. Black background dotted with stars, distant galaxies.

Hubble Captures Extraordinarily Bright Interacting Galaxies

These interacting galaxies, known as AM 1214-255, hold active galactic nuclei, or AGNs. 

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Two bright, oval blobs of stars. One right below image center, the other to the upper left. These blobs are galaxies with bright white centers that dims toward their edges. Black background dotted with stars.

Hubble Spots an Energetic Galaxy

NGC 547 is an elliptical galaxy that sits about 250 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Cetus. 

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Lower left: Bright-white sphere of stars that is more diffuse toward its edges. Band of brown streaks arcs from the sphere's lower left to upper right where a face-on barred spiral galaxy shines in the distance. Black background dotted with stars.

Hubble Views a Beautiful Luminous Galaxy

Lenticular galaxy, NGC 5283, is also a Seyfert galaxy.

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Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; Lead Producer: James Leigh

Hubble Science: Monster Black Holes are Everywhere

Hubble found that supermassive black holes lie at the heart of nearly every galaxy.

Before Hubble, astronomers theorized the existence of supermassive black holes, but they had no conclusive evidence. 

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Computer simulation of a supermassive black hole at the core of a galaxy. Center is a black circle. Surrounding the black circle are arcs of red, blue, orange, and white. Further out from the circle are blotches of red, blue, orange, and white representing celestial objects.
This computer-simulated image shows a supermassive black hole at the core of a galaxy. The black region in the center represents the black hole’s event horizon, where no light can escape the massive object’s gravitational grip. The black hole’s powerful gravity distorts space around it like a funhouse mirror. Light from background stars is stretched and smeared as the stars skim by the black hole.
NASA, ESA, and D. Coe, J. Anderson, and R. van der Marel (STScI)

Explore More Hubble Black Hole Stories

  • Illustration: black field with white, yellow, and red galaxies. A black hole near bottom left corner plows through space, leaving a diagonal trail of newborn stars stretching back to the black hole's parent galaxy in the upper right corner.

    Hubble Sees Possible Runaway Black Hole Creating a Trail of Stars

    There's an invisible monster on the loose, barreling through intergalactic space so fast that if it were in our solar system, it could travel from Earth to the Moon in 14 minutes. 

  • Dwarf galaxy with bright, blue stars, red and amber gas clouds, no visible spiral arms

    Hubble Finds a Black Hole Igniting Star Formation in a Dwarf Galaxy

    Often portrayed as destructive monsters that hold light captive, black holes take on a less villainous role in the latest Hubble research. 

  • Illustration of a black hole at center of frame, swirling disk of rusty-orange and white gas surrounds the black hole

    Hubble Finds Hungry Black Hole Twisting Captured Star Into Donut Shape

    Black holes are gatherers, not hunters. They lie in wait until a hapless star wanders by. 

  • Stars and black, pink, and bluish-purple clouds of gas and dust swirl into a black hole at image center.

    Hubble Determines Mass of Isolated Black Hole Roaming Our Milky Way Galaxy

    Astronomers estimate that 100 million black holes roam among the stars in our Milky Way galaxy, but they have never conclusively identified an isolated black hole. 

  • The field is filled with stars against a black background. Stars are more dense at image center and taper off toward the edges. Star colors are mainly white and blue-white with a smattering of large, orangish stars.

    NASA’s Hubble Hunts for Intermediate-Sized Black Hole Close to Home

    It's estimated that our galaxy is littered with 100 million small black holes (several times the mass of our Sun) created from exploded stars.