chandra_72 March 1st, 2004
Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/R.DiStefano et al.
This Chandra image of M101 shows numerous "quasisoft" X-ray sources (marked with green diamonds) that may represent a new class of objects. The quasisoft sources have temperatures in the range of one to four million degrees Celsius, significantly less than the ten to a hundred million degree gas associated with "hard" X-ray sources, such as neutron stars or stellar-mass black holes. The power output of quasisoft sources is comparable to or greater than that of neutron stars or stellar-mass black holes fueled by the infall of matter from companion stars. It not known how quasisoft sources are produced; one possibility is that they are due to hot gas swirling around intermediate-mass black holes with masses a hundred or more times greater than the mass of the Sun.
Provider: Chandra X-ray Observatory
Image Source: http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2004/m101/
Curator: Chandra X-ray Observatory, Cambridge, MA, USA
Image Use Policy: http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/image_use.html
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