Chandra Release - December 13, 2012

Visual Description: NGC 3627

 The multiwavelength image of NGC 3627 is a beautiful view of a spiral galaxy.  At the center of the image, there is a bright, spiral object softly colored in pale yellow with pops of bright red and soft blue around its arms. The galaxy is surrounded by a handful of smaller colored dots, with one large dot up top, looking like a galaxy floating in an immense black sea. The spiral galaxy NGC 3627 is located about 30 million light years from Earth. This composite image includes X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (colored in blue), infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope (red), and optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Very Large Telescope (yellow). An inset at the upper right shows the central region in X-ray light, which contains a bright source that is likely powered by material falling onto a supermassive black hole.