page_title: NuSTAR
section_title: Nearby supermassive black holes
hierarchical_section_title: NuSTAR / Major scientific results / Nearby supermassive black holes
caption_attribution_description: English: NASA's Nuclear Spectroscope Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, has imaged a swath of the Andromeda galaxy -- the nearest large galaxy to our own Milky Way galaxy. NuSTAR's view (inset) shows high-energy X-rays coming mostly from X-ray binaries, which are pairs of stars in which one "dead" member feeds off its companion. The dead member of the pair is either a black hole or neutron star. NuSTAR can pick up even the faintest of these objects, providing a better understanding of their population, as a whole, in Andromeda. The findings ultimately help astronomers gather clues about similar objects in the very distant universe. The background image of Andromeda was taken by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer in ultraviolet light. Andromeda is a spiral galaxy like our Milky Way but larger in size. It lies 2.5 million light-years away in the Andromeda constellation.
context_page_description: NuSTAR is a space-based X-ray telescope that uses a conical approximation to a Wolter telescope to focus high energy X-rays from astrophysical sources, especially for nuclear spectroscopy, and operates in the range of 3 to 79 keV.
  NuSTAR is the eleventh mission of NASA's Small Explorer satellite program and the first space-based direct-imaging X-ray telescope at energies beyond those of the Chandra X-ray Observatory and XMM-Newton. It was successfully launched on 13 June 2012, having previously been delayed from 21 March due to software issues with the launch vehicle.
  The mission's primary scientific goals are to conduct a deep survey for black holes a billion times more massive than the Sun, to investigate how particles are accelerated to very high energy in active galaxies, and to understand how the elements are created in the explosions of massive stars by imaging the remains, which are called supernova remnants.
  Having completed a two-year primary mission, NuSTAR is in its eighth year of operation.
context_section_description: In January 2017, researchers from Durham University and the University of Southampton, leading a coalition of agencies using NuSTAR data, announced the discovery of supermassive black holes at the center of nearby galaxies NGC 1448 and IC 3639.
caption: Andromeda
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