Chandra Release - March 25, 2009

Visual Description: GRS 1915+105

GRS 1915+105 is a composite image of a stellar-mass black hole. The image features a bright purple star inset in the upper left  in X-ray light, surrounded by the large field of view.  The full field includes many specks of light, bits of dust and gas in a densely packed area. The colors in the image are dominated by shades of purple, blue, and pink with some dark brown and black areas. The optical and infrared image from the Digitized Sky Survey shows the crowded field around GRS 1915, located near the plane of our Galaxy. The inset shows a close-up of the Chandra image of GRS 1915, one of the brightest X-ray sources in the Milky Way galaxy. This micro-quasar contains a black hole about 14 times the mass of the Sun that is feeding off material from a nearby companion star. As the material swirls toward the black hole, an accretion disk forms. Powerful jets have also been observed in radio images of this system, along with remarkably unpredictable and complicated variability ranging from timescales of seconds to months.