Close-up view of the two bright galactic nuclei, each housing a supermassive black hole, in NGC 7727, a galaxy located 89 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Aquarius. Each nucleus consists of a dense group of stars with a supermassive black hole at its centre. The two black holes are on a collision course and form the closest pair of supermassive black holes found to date. It is also the pair with the smallest separation between two supermassive black holes — observed just 1600 light-years apart in the sky.
The image was taken with the MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile.
Credit:
About the Image
| Id: | eso2117b |
| Type: | Observation |
| Release date: | 30 November 2021, 14:00 |
| Related releases: | eso2117 |
| Size: | 929 x 924 px |
About the Object
Coordinates
| Position (RA): | 23 39 53.76 |
| Position (Dec): | -12° 17′ 32.53″ |
| Field of view: | 0.14 x 0.13 arcminutes |
| Orientation: | North is 2.5° right of vertical |
<!– Disabled for now
View with Aladin Live
–>
View in WorldWide Telescope:
