# @nasa on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/CrytMltJT9c
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/6105680-nasa-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/a179c08419.jpg
- **Posted:** 2023-05-03T19:12:23.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** NASA (@NASA) — https://gondola.cc/NASA

## Caption

Black Hole Sun 🎸⁣⁣
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Located 12 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Centaurus, Cen A illuminates in this image collected from multiple observatories.⁣
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In the center of this galaxy, a supermassive black hole feeds off the gas and dust encircling it. Large jets of high-energy particles and other material can be seen spewing out. The jet shown at the upper left of this image extends for about 13,000 light-years away from the black hole. A dust lane, which may have been caused by a collision with a smaller galaxy millions of years ago, wraps around the middle of the galaxy⁣
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Colors in this image have been chosen to reflect the sources of data. Blue shows X-ray light captured by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (nasachandraxray), orange represents X-rays detected by NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) satellite, and optical light seen by the European Southern Observatory in Chile is colored white and gray.⁣⁣
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Image description: Centaurus A glows in the midst of a dark sky dotted with hundreds of stars and other objects in the foreground and background. A bright pink-white spot shines at the center of the image, with hazy clouds in orange, pink, and blue-purple glowing around it. A narrow blue-white beam shines towards the upper left corner, showing a jet spewing out high-energy particles and other material. A dark, wispy dust lane wraps around the middle of the galaxy, tilted slightly off-horizontal and obscuring some of the features behind it.⁣⁣
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Image credit: (X-ray) IXPE: NASA/MSFC/IXPE/S. Ehlert et al.; Chandra: NASA/CXC/SAO; (Optical)  ESO/WFI; Image processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J.Schmidt⁣⁣
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#NASA #SolarSystem #BlackHoleWeek #NASAUniverse #Telescope #Xray #BlackHole #Galaxy

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## Tags

nasauniverse, nasa, xray, galaxy, solarsystem, blackhole, telescope, blackholeweek

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