A star, which exploded as a supernova in 1979, has ended up as a black hole — as indicated by 12 years of observations by four different X-ray telescopes, including NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. In the same location where the SN 1979C supernova was observed, astronomers have also found a powerful X-ray source, with radiation probably derived from matter that has fallen into a black hole.

The black hole is located in the M100 galaxy in the Virgo cluster, 50 million light-years away. It formed around 50 million years ago when a star with a mass of approximately 20 times the sun’s exploded and its core collapsed. And even though the black hole is actually tens of millions of years old, Chandra sees it as it appeared when it was just 32 years old, just as a person captured in a photograph never ages.