Credit: NASA/CXC/Ohio State Univ./C.Grier et al.; Optical:
NASA/STScI, ESO/WFI; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech Spiral Galaxy
NGC 3627 - The spiral galaxy NGC 3627 is located about 30
million light years from Earth. This composite image includes
X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue),
infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope (red), and
optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Very Large
Telescope (yellow). The inset shows the central region, which
contains a bright X-ray source that is likely powered by
material falling onto a supermassive black hole. A search using
archival data from previous Chandra observations of a sample of
62 nearby galaxies has shown that 37 of the galaxies, including
NGC 3627, contain X-ray sources in their centers. Most of these
sources are likely powered by central supermassive black holes.
The survey, which also used data from the Spitzer Infrared
Nearby Galaxy Survey, found that seven of the 37 sources are new
supermassive black hole candidates. Confi