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Artist's rendition of the accretion disk and radio jet around the black hole in the heart of the Seyfert galaxy NGC 4258. NGC 4258 contains one of the very few galactic nuclei for which astronomers can make images of accretion disk material that lies within a few tenths of a parsec from a supermassive black hole. The most remarkable characteristics of the disk are that it is "paper thin," warped, and rotating differentially according to Kepler's laws (i.e., the square of rotation velocity is proportional to the reciprocal of radius). In many other galaxies the characteristics of accretion disks must be inferred indirectly. In NGC 4258, they may be inferred directly from images that resolve the velocity and angular structure of the disk. In this artist's conception, the disk is color coded according to Doppler shift. The blue regions of the disk are moving toward us, while the red regions move away from us. The inset at the bottom of the graphic is a radio spectrum (intensity as a funct...