Monster black hole burps out hot gas in bright 'H' shape (photos)

Astronomers used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to make a map of the hot gas (pink) in and around the galaxy M84. (Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Princeton Univ/C. Bambic et al.; Optical: SDSS; Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA/ESO; Image processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N.Wolk)

A hot pink letter "H" is carved into the blazing hot gas that surrounds a supermassive black hole that lurks at the heart of a massive galaxy. The structure is a staggering 40,000 light-years tall, making it about half the width of our entire galaxy, the Milky Way. 

The "H" was revealed in an X-ray image of gas that surrounds the black hole in the elliptical galaxy Messier 84 (M84), located around 60 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo.