033213.9-275000 & 033251.6-275212: Two distant,
dust-shrouded supermassive black holes in the Great Observatory Origins
Deep Survey (GOODS) field.
Caption: Three of NASA's Great Observatories -
the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the Spitzer
Space Telescope - have found evidence of a hidden population of supermassive
black holes in the universe. Two of these objects appear as X-ray sources
(large blue central spots) without optical counterparts in the composite
Hubble-Chandra images on the upper and lower left panels. The Chandra-Spitzer
(X-ray/infrared) images on the upper and lower right panels demonstrate
that these mysterious X-ray sources are also detected at infrared wavelengths.
This indicates that the galaxies around these supermassive black holes are
heavily obscured by dust. Visible light is absorbed by the dust, which is
heated by the absorption and glows at infrared wavelengths. Combined data
from Chandra, Spitzer and Hubble should soon yield a much more complete
census of the number of black holes in the early universe
Chandra X-ray Observatory ACIS Images.
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