PIA23588: Millions of Giant Black Holes
 Mission:  Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE)
 Product Size:  1622 x 1125 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  IPAC-Caltech
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA23588.tif (3.503 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA23588.jpg (207.5 kB)

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Original Caption Released with Image:

Peering more than 10 billion light-years into the distance, WISE has found tens of millions of actively feeding supermassive lack holes across the full sky. The orange circles highlight those that the telescope identified in a small patch of sky; the two zoomed-in images came from the Hubble Space Telescope. WISE easily sees these monsters because their powerful, accreting black holes warm the dust, causing it to glow in infrared light. The blue circles indicate black holes that were detected using visible-light imagers. In most, that light is blocked by dust.

JPL managed and operated WISE for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. Edward Wright at UCLA was the principal investigator. The mission was selected competitively under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

For more information about WISE, visit http://www.nasa.gov/wise and https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/wise/

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

Image Addition Date:
2019-12-13