Scientists have discovered an oddly-shaped galaxy that may contain the first newborn supermassive black hole ever spotted, as described in our latest blog post. If confirmed, this result implies that black holes can form remarkably quickly, not just soon after the Big Bang but throughout cosmic time.
This composite image of the so-called Infinity Galaxy shows X-rays from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (purple) and infrared data from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (red, green and blue). The Webb data shows two rings of stars and gas seen in the Infinity Galaxy, which astronomers think were likely formed from the collision of two galaxies. The centers of these two galaxies are the white-orange sources in the middle of the two rings, in the lower left and upper right of the galaxy.
X-ray data from Chandra and radio data from the NSF’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) have uncovered a growing supermassive black hole in this galaxy. Such black holes are usually found in the centers of massive galaxies, but the Chandra and VLA data may show that this is not the case for the Infinity Galaxy. The VLA data suggests the supermassive black hole is located in between both galaxies in a cloud of gas. The Chandra data unambiguously reveals the presence of a growing black hole near the center of the galaxy.
A paper that discusses the Webb, Chandra and VLA observations of the Infinity Galaxy has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and a preprint is here. The author list is Pieter van Dokkum (Yale), Gabriel Brammer (University of Copenhagen), and Josephine F.W. Baggen, Michael Keim, Priyamvada Natarajan and Imad Pasha (all from Yale). A separate paper led by van Dokkum with the newer Webb data is currently being reviewed at the Astrophysical Journal Letters and the submitted version is available online.
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.
A pair of distant galaxies that form the rough shape of an infinity symbol seen at about a 45-degree angle. Two overlapping, fuzzy rings with brighter blue patches are at the upper right and lower left. At the center of each ring is a bright yellow blob, which are the nuclei of each galaxy. These structures are seen in infrared data from the James Webb Space Telescope. Where the two rings overlap on the left side, there is a mottled green patch of glowing gas midway between the two yellow nuclei. It is offset slightly to the left. A cloud of purple passes between the two nuclei, extending over parts of each nuclei and toward the outer edges of the galaxies in both directions. This purple cloud shows X-rays seen with the Chandra X-ray Observatory.
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