Repent, sinners! SATAN EXISTS! And his evil eye is looking at you from the sky! I mean, if there is an Eye of God* up there there has to be an Eye of Satan in permanent staring competition, right?
At least, it looks like a really evil eye to me. Officially, it is a photo of the central region of NGC 4151, a spiral galaxy 43 millions light years away from Earth. It’s one of the nearest galaxy with a known growing supermassive black hole.
What you are seeing here is a composite made from X-ray images (blue) from the Chandra X-ray Observatory combined with optical data (yellow) from the 1-meter Kapteyn Telescope on La Palma and radio observations (red) by the National Science Foundation’s Very Large Array.
According to NASA, the fierce X-ray activity “probably was caused by an outburst powered by the supermassive black hole located in the white region in the centre of the galaxy”. The observation of this galaxy is bringing great information about how supermassive black holes interact with the matter around them.
If the X-ray emission in NGC 4151 originates from hot gas heated by the outflow from the central black hole, it would be strong evidence for feedback from active black holes to the surrounding gas on galaxy scales. This would resemble the larger scale feedback, observed on galaxy cluster scales, from active black holes interacting with the surrounding gas, as seen in objects like the Perseus Cluster.
I love astronomy porn, no matter if it looks evil.
* The Eye of God is the popular name of this image, not the name given by NASA. Its real name is NGC 7293 or the Helix Nebula, the remnants of a star that will eventually become a white dwarf. The image is a composite from the Hubble’s ACS instrument and images from the Mosaic Camera on the WIYN 0.9-m Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory, on the Quinlan Mountains in the Arizona-Sonoran Desert.
Lucas
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 8:27 AMI hope people realise that the colours are made up by NASA as a visual representation of the data – we don’t actually know what colour it is!
Titsnass
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 10:05 AMAgreed, however I would think they’d base it on a visible spectrum that comes close to the objects spectrum?
Osiris Fox
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 2:07 PMYeah yeah, next thing you’ll be telling us Santa doesn’t exist! Bah!
Sam Timmins
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 10:10 AMOne Planetary Ring to Rule Them All…
Kent Brockman
Friday, January 13, 2012 at 5:53 PMEye for one welcome our new Satan overlord.
M Tennant
Friday, January 20, 2012 at 12:57 PMdo we really even know where this thing is? One site said 700 light years, another says “43 million” light years. Obviously we’re not getting there any time soon, but why the discrepancy?
Asmitty
Saturday, January 21, 2012 at 7:16 AMOne image is of NGC 4151 and the other is of NGC 7293. There’s no distance discrepancy.
squrtzaye
Friday, January 20, 2012 at 4:38 PMI’ll stare that mo-fo down—-and whoop his tailess butt
Upchuck
Saturday, January 21, 2012 at 2:58 AMThe color representation and for that matter, the “nebula” may not exist at all. It may be an elaborate hoax so the “scientists” with the telescopes can justify spending our tax dollars. Not to mention the hundreds of billions already spent on the fake moon landings and the pointless shuttle program.
QUMBAALA
Saturday, January 21, 2012 at 3:22 AMRegarding the comment made by Lucas… It’s not that we don’t know what colors these things are… it’s just that some of their light does not fall within the visible region of the electromagnetic spectrum so those parts have no color at all in the conventional sense.