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Hubble Probes the Black Hole Inside a Majestic Spiral Galaxy<\/strong><\/p>\n The graceful, winding arms of the majestic spiral galaxy NGC 3147 appear like a grand spiral staircase sweeping through space in this Hubble Space Telescope image. They are actually long lanes of young blue stars, pinkish nebulas, and dust in silhouette.<\/p>\n The beauty of the galaxy belies the fact that at its very center is a malnourished black hole surrounded by a thin, compact disk of stars, gas, and dust that have been caught up in a gravitational maelstrom. The black hole’s gravity is so intense that anything that ventures near it gets swept up in the disk.<\/p>\n The disk is so deeply embedded in the black hole’s intense gravitational field that the light from the gas disk is modified, according to Einstein’s theories of relativity, giving astronomers a unique peek at the dynamic processes close to a black hole.<\/p>\n NGC 3147 is located 130 million light-years away in the northern circumpolar constellation Draco the Dragon.\n<\/p>\n