This magnificent galactic pyrotechnics light show involves a giant black hole, shock waves, and vast reservoirs of gas doing their magic in this spiral galaxy similar to our Milky Way, but some 23 million light years away from Earth in NGC 4258 (also known as M106). The large “arms” of this spiral galaxy are believed to be shock waves, generated by large black hole at the center,  heating large amounts of gas equivalent to about 10 million suns.  In this composite image of NGC 4258;

• radio data from the NSF’s Karl Jansky Very Large Array is represented by regions that are purple in colour
• X-rays from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory are in blue
• infrared data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope is in red
• optical data derived from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope are the yellow and blue areas