The sunshine that the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope collected to create this picture reached the telescope after a journey of 250 million years. Its supply was the spiral galaxy UGC 11397, which resides within the constellation Lyra (The Lyre). At first look, UGC 11397 seems to be a median spiral galaxy: it sports activities two sleek spiral arms which are illuminated by stars and outlined by darkish, clumpy clouds of mud.
What units UGC 11397 other than a typical spiral lies at its middle, the place a supermassive black gap containing 174 million occasions the mass of our Solar grows. As a black gap ensnares fuel, mud, and even total stars from its neighborhood, this doomed matter heats up and places on a unbelievable cosmic gentle present.
Materials trapped by the black gap emits gentle from gamma rays to radio waves, and may brighten and fade with out warning. However in some galaxies, together with UGC 11397, thick clouds of mud disguise a lot of this energetic exercise from view in optical gentle. Regardless of this, UGC 11397’s actively rising black gap was revealed by its brilliant X-ray emission — high-energy gentle that may pierce the encircling mud. This led astronomers to categorise it as a Kind 2 Seyfert galaxy, a class used for energetic galaxies whose central areas are hidden from view in seen gentle by a donut-shaped cloud of mud and fuel.
Utilizing Hubble, researchers will research tons of of galaxies that, like UGC 11397, harbor a supermassive black gap that’s gaining mass. The Hubble observations will assist researchers weigh close by supermassive black holes, perceive how black holes grew early within the universe’s historical past, and even research how stars type within the excessive setting discovered on the very middle of a galaxy.
Textual content credit score: ESA
Picture credit score: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. J. Koss, A. J. Barth