This is an illustration of how the night sky might look to a dweller in the core of galaxy NGC 4261, which harbors an 800-light-year-wide disk of dust and 1.2 billion-solar-mass black hole.

This imaginary view is from a hypothetical planet inside the dust dusk, looking toward the black hole. The black hole's white-hot glow from super-heated gas is reddened by intervening dust.

Credit: J. Gitlin ( Space Telescope Science Institute)