Type

Intermediate mass

Location

in the constellation Pisces

Distance

32 million light-years

Mass

10,000 times the mass of the Sun

Size

Diameter about 37,000 miles (60,000 km), a bit larger than the planet Uranus

Discovery Methods

• Detection of an accretion disk

The X-ray glow of a disk of superhot gas in the galaxy M74 suggests that it encircles a black hole about 10,000 times as massive as the Sun. The orbiting Chandra X-Ray Observatory measured the X-ray energy from the object, which is enclosed in a box at top. Chandra’s X-ray image (which shows other sources of X-rays as red dots) is superimposed on a visible-light image of the galaxy from a ground-based telescope. [NASA/CXC/U. Michigan/J.Liu et al./NOAO/AURA/NSF/T.Boroson]

This document was last modified: January 19, 2006.