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Illustration and X-ray Image of RACS J0320-35Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/INAF-Brera/L. Ighina et al.; Illustration: NASA/CXC/SAO/M. Weiss; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk
These graphics include an artist’s illustration of the quasar named RACS J0320-35, which is located about 12.8 billion light-years from Earth. A quasar is a black hole with large amounts of material in its gravitational grasp, surrounded by a disk that generates huge amounts of light. The illustration shows this captured material as the red, orange and yellow swirls around the black sphere that represents the black hole. It also shows a jet of energetic particles blasting away from the black hole to the lower right. Chandra data show that this distant black hole is growing at one of the fastest rates ever seen, which has implications for how the Universe’s first generation of black holes formed.
Return to: NASA's Chandra Finds Black Hole With Tremendous Growth (September 18, 2025)