Contact: Megan Watzke
mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu
617-496-7998
Chandra X-ray Center

Composite Image of a Blob

Caption: This composite image shows one of the brightest objects observed in a study of 29 blobs located in a single field. Glowing hydrogen gas in the blob is shown by a Lyman-alpha optical image (colored yellow) from the Subaru telescope. A galaxy located in the blob is visible in a broadband optical image (white) from the Hubble Space Telescope and an infrared image from the Spitzer Space Telescope (red). Finally, the Chandra X-ray Observatory image (blue) shows evidence for a growing supermassive black hole in the center of the galaxy. Radiation and outflows from this active black hole are lighting up and heating the gas in the blob.

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Durham Univ./D.Alexander et al.; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI/IoA/S.Chapman et al.; Lyman-alpha Optical: NAOJ/Subaru/Tohoku Univ./T.Hayashino et al.; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Durham Univ./J.Geach et al.

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