Image 7-9
Galaxy NGC 1097

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has imaged a wild creature of the dark, a coiled galaxy with an eye-like object at its center. The galaxy, known as NGC 1097, is located 50 million light-years from Earth. It is spiral-shaped galaxy like our own Milky Way, with long, spindly, spiral arms of stars. The "eye" at the center of the galaxy is actually a supermassive black hole surrounded by a ring of stars. In this color-coded infrared view from Spitzer, the area around the invisible black hole is blue and the ring of stars is white.