Chandra Release - July 27, 2011

Visual Description: NGC 3115

The image features an X-ray and optical composite image of a lenticular galaxy named NGC 3115. The galaxy is a large fuzzy disk in shape, colored orange, and surrounded by small blue and white dots. NGC 3115 is shown here with data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope. The Chandra data are colored in blue and the optical data from the VLT are colored orange. Using the Chandra image, the flow of hot gas toward the supermassive black hole in the center of this galaxy has been imaged. This is the first time that clear evidence for such a flow has been observed in any black hole.  The point sources in the X-ray image are mostly binary stars containing gas that is being pulled from a star to a stellar-mass black hole or a neutron star. An inset at upper right features the central portion of the Chandra image, with the black hole located in the middle. No point source is seen at the position of the black hole, but instead a plateau of X-ray emission coming from both hot gas and the combined X-ray emission from unresolved binary stars is found.