NASA's Chandra telescope captures black hole spitting out 'materials' in different galaxy

NASA’s Hubble telescope is all that comes to mind when we crave mesmerising images of the universe. However, this new image, revealing the hot spots in the Universe, has been presented by the Chandra-X observatory, which captured streams of outflowing material generated by the giant black hole. In a thread of tweets posted on Monday, November 8, the observatory detailed the components featured in the image and the science behind it. Take a look at the image below.

"This image shows the spectacular jet of outflowing material generated by the giant black hole at the center of galaxy Centaurus A. The lowest-energy X-rays are red, medium-energy X-rays are green, and the highest-energy ones are blue", the observatory explained in a second tweet. 

Chandra and its longing for galaxy 'Centaurus A'

According to Chandra's statement, the image is from the galaxy Centaurus A or Cen A, which is located about 12 million light-years from Earth and has a massive jet of materials blasting away from a central supermassive black hole. Chandra has been after Cen A just weeks after it began operations in 1999. The image shared by the observatory shows the spectacular jet of outflowing material - seen pointing from the middle to the upper left - that is generated by the giant black hole at the galaxy's center. 

"This new high-energy snapshot of Cen A also highlights a dust lane that wraps around the waist of the galaxy. Astronomers think this feature is a remnant of a collision that Cen A experienced with a smaller galaxy millions of years ago", said the statement. Scientists say that the data housed in Chandra's extensive archive on Cen A provide a rich resource for a wide range of scientific investigations. This particular image of Cen A contains data from observations, equivalent to over nine and a half days' worth of time, taken between 1999 and 2012, says the observatory.

According to the astronomers, this image provides the first hints that a mass gap occurs between neutron stars and black holes in distant galaxies, and a deep dive into the archival data about masses of massive entities might reveal why massive stars explode. Recently, Chandra shared another image of interacting galaxies CGCG436-030, while it was studying a star in Pisces. Check out the image below.

Image: Twitter/@chandraxray