A big beautiful spiral galaxy 2 million light-years away, Andromeda (M31) [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] has long been touted as an analog to the Milky Way, a distant mirror of our own galaxy. The popular 1960s British sci-fi series, A For Andromeda [
http://www.cs.monas…Andromeda/index.html ], even postulated that it was home to another technological civilization that communicated [
http://www.bigear.o…] with us. Using the newly unleashed observing power of the orbiting Chandra [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] X-ray telescope, astronomers have now imaged [
http://chandra.harv…] the center of our near-twin island universe [
ftp://crux.astr.ua.…], finding evidence for an object so bizarre it would have impressed many 60s science fiction [
http://www.magicdra…] writers (and readers). Like the Milky Way [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…], Andromeda's galactic center appears to harbor an X-ray source characteristic of a black hole [
http://chandra.harv…] of a million or more solar masses. Seen above, the false-color X-ray picture [
http://chandra.harv…] shows a number of X-ray sources, likely X-ray binary stars [
http://heasarc.gsfc…], within Andromeda's central region as yellowish dots. The blue source located right at the galaxy's center is coincident with the position of the suspected massive black hole. While the X-rays [
http://chandra.harv…] are produced as material falls into the black hole and heats up, estimates from the X-ray data show Andromeda's central source to be surprisingly cool - only a million degrees or so compared to the tens of millions of degrees indicated for Andromeda's X-ray binaries [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…].
Explanation
A big beautiful spiral galaxy 2 million light-years away, Andromeda (M31) [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] has long been touted as an analog to the Milky Way, a distant mirror of our own galaxy. The popular 1960s British sci-fi series, A For Andromeda [
http://www.cs.monas…Andromeda/index.html ], even postulated that it was home to another technological civilization that communicated [
http://www.bigear.o…] with us. Using the newly unleashed observing power of the orbiting Chandra [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] X-ray telescope, astronomers have now imaged [
http://chandra.harv…] the center of our near-twin island universe [
ftp://crux.astr.ua.…], finding evidence for an object so bizarre it would have impressed many 60s science fiction [
http://www.magicdra…] writers (and readers). Like the Milky Way [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…], Andromeda's galactic center appears to harbor an X-ray source characteristic of a black hole [
http://chandra.harv…] of a million or more solar masses. Seen above, the false-color X-ray picture [
http://chandra.harv…] shows a number of X-ray sources, likely X-ray binary stars [
http://heasarc.gsfc…], within Andromeda's central region as yellowish dots. The blue source located right at the galaxy's center is coincident with the position of the suspected massive black hole. While the X-rays [
http://chandra.harv…] are produced as material falls into the black hole and heats up, estimates from the X-ray data show Andromeda's central source to be surprisingly cool - only a million degrees or so compared to the tens of millions of degrees indicated for Andromeda's X-ray binaries [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…].
Explanation
