Edge-on Spiral Galaxy ESO 243-49

ESO 243-49 is believed to be home to an intermediate-mass black hole, HLX-1. The edge-on spiral galaxy is 290 million light-years from Earth.

About the colours

This image is a composite of separate exposures acquired by the WFC3 instrument on HST. Several filters were used to sample broad wavelength ranges. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic (grayscale) image associated with an individual filter. In this case, the assigned colors are: Blue: F390W (C) Aquamarine: F555W (V) Yellow/green: F774W (i) Red: F160W (H)

About the data

The image was created from Hubble data from proposal 12256 : S. Farrell (Sydney Institute for Astronomy, University of Sydney), C. Knigge and T. Maccarone (University of Southampton), A. Gosling (University of Oxford), M. Servillat (Harvard University), K. Wiersema (University of Leicester), and N. Webb, D. Barret, and O. Godet (Centre d' Etude Spatiale des Rayonnements, Toulouse, France)