Extended hard X-ray emission from a galactic nucleus

Supermassive black holes containing millions or even billions of solar masses of material are found at the nuclei of almost all galaxies. The Milky Way, for example, has a nuclear black hole with about 4 million solar masses of material. Around the black hole is a torus of dust and gas, and when material falls toward the black hole the inner edge of this disk can be heated to millions of degrees, and emit in X-rays.