This Chandra image of M101 shows numerous „quasisoft“ X-ray sources (marked with green diamonds) that may represent a new class of objects. The quasisoft sources have temperatures in the range of one to four million degrees Celsius, significantly less than the ten to a hundred million degree gas associated with „hard“ X-ray sources, such as neutron stars or stellar-mass black holes. The power output of quasisoft sources is comparable to or greater than that of neutron stars or stellar-mass black holes fueled by the infall of matter from companion stars. It not known how quasisoft sources are produced; one possibility is that they are due to hot gas swirling around intermediate-mass black holes with masses a hundred or more times greater than the mass of the Sun.