Chandra Release - March 21, 2024

Visual Description: H1821+643

This composite image shows a quasar, a rare and extreme class of supermassive black hole, that's located about 3.4 billion light-years from Earth. 

At the center of the image is a bright, white, circular light, similar to the beam of a flashlight if it was pointed directly toward you. A fuzzy, bar-shaped structure of red-colored radio light, slightly larger than the width of the white light, surrounds the circular structure. The red bar also extends above and below the white light, stretching in a somewhat straight line from about the one o'clock position to the seven o'clock position on a clock face.

On either side of the red bar, X-ray light is present as blue, wispy clouds of hot gas that are brighter closer to the red and white features. The brighter clouds represent more dense gas.