Chandra Release - November 15, 2010

Visual Description: SN 1979C

The image features a supernova named SN 1979C in a spiral galaxy called M100.  The galaxy appears in the center of the image, with beautiful spiral arms, made up of gas, dust, stars and other celestial objects.  The colors in the image are predominantly shades of pink-red and yellow, with pops of brown and blue-white.   The intricate, swirling pattern of the spiral creates a sense of depth and movement within the image.   The supernova stands out as a bright dot at the bottom of an arm, around 7 o'clock.   It may contain the youngest known black hole in our cosmic neighborhood. In the image, Chandra's X-rays are colored yellow-gold, while optical data from ESO's Very Large Telescope are shown in white and blue, and infrared data from Spitzer are red. Data from Chandra, as well as NASA's Swift, the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton and the German ROSAT observatory support the idea that the object in SN 1979C is a black hole being fed either by material falling back into the black hole after the supernova, or from a binary companion.