Chandra Release - February 15, 2005

Visual Description: Lockman Hole

The Chandra X-ray Observatory image features a region of the sky known as the Lockman Hole, which is an area in the constellation Ursa Major. The region of the sky is named after astronomer Felix Lockman, who discovered that this region of the Galaxy is almost free of absorption by neutral hydrogen gas.  The Chandra image shows hundreds of X-ray sources, like a black rectangle dominated by various bright dots of red, blue, purple, green, and orange.  The high spatial resolution of Chandra allowed for the identification of many supermassive black holes in this field of view.  On the right are two small illustrations depicting the types of black holes found in the image. Both show fluffy-looking orange disks with a small rainbow-colored core surrounding a black hole on a dark brownish-red background. But the top illustration of a supermassive black hole shows a wider thinner disk with 2 white jets jutting out of its core.  The bottom illustration of a smaller black hole shows a thicker puffier disk and no jets.