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Back Dust Disk Fuels Black Hole

Dust Disk Fuels Black Hole


Date: 18 November 1992
Depicts: NGC 4261
Copyright: National Radio Astronomy Observatory, California Institute of Technology

The giant elliptical galaxy NGC 4261 is one of the 12 brightest galaxies in the Virgo Cluster, located 45 million light-years away. Photographed in visible light [white] the galaxy appears as a fuzzy disk of hundreds of billions of stars. A radio image [orange] shows a pair of opposed jets emanating from the nucleus and spanning a distance of 88 000 light-years.
Last Update: 1 September 2019
8-Mar-2026 23:25 UT

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