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PIA17561: Topsy Turvy Black Holes
The magenta spots in this image from NASA's NuSTAR show two black holes in the spiral galaxy called NGC 1313, or the Topsy Turvy galaxy, located about 13 million light-years away in the Reticulum constellation.
 Mission:  NuSTAR 
 Instrument:  NuSTAR 
 Product Size:  1400 x 1400 pixels (w x h) 
 Produced By:  IPAC-Caltech 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA17561.tif (5.882 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA17561.jpg (137.5 kB)  

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

The magenta spots in this image show two black holes in the spiral galaxy called NGC 1313, or the Topsy Turvy galaxy. Both black holes belong to a class called ultraluminous X-ray sources, or ULXs. The magenta X-ray data come from NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescopic Array, and are overlaid on a visible image from the Digitized Sky Survey.

ULXs consist of black holes actively accreting, or feeding, off material drawn in from a partner star. Astronomers are trying to figure out why ULXs shine so brightly with X-rays.

NuSTAR's new high-energy X-ray data on NGC 1313 helped narrow down the masses of the black holes in the ULXs: the black hole closer to the center of the galaxy is about 70 to 100 times that of our sun. The other black hole is probably smaller, about 30 solar masses.

The Topsy Turvy galaxy is located about 13 million light-years away in the Reticulum constellation.

For more information, visit http://www.nasa.gov/nustar and http://www.nustar.caltech.edu/.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/IRAP

Image Addition Date:
2013-11-26