Astronomers have captured the most comprehensive image of emissions from a supermassive black hole.
Centaurus A with a central black hole. Photo: Louisiana State University, ICRAR/Curtin
The outburst from the cosmic black hole occurred at the center of the Centaurus A galaxy, located about 12 million light-years from Earth. Centaurus A is the nearest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way, which houses Earth.
The black hole ejected matter at nearly the speed of light, leading to the development of “radio bubbles” over hundreds of millions of years.
When viewed from Earth, the black hole’s outburst in Centaurus A extends across 8 degrees of the sky, equivalent to the length of 16 full moons lined up next to each other.
The image of the black hole’s outburst was captured using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) radio telescope in the remote region of Western Australia.
Centaurus A is a massive elliptical galaxy located 12 million light-years away from Earth. At the center of this galaxy resides a black hole with a mass equivalent to 55 million Suns. Photo credits: ICRAR/Curtin and Louisiana State University.
The research was published on December 22, 2021, in the journal Nature Astronomy.
Dr. Benjamin McKinley, the lead author and a researcher at Curtin University in Australia, revealed that the image unveils spectacular new details about the radio emissions from the galaxy.
“These radio waves come from material being drawn into the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy,” he said.
He further explained, “Previous radio observations couldn’t handle the extreme brightness of the radio beams and the details of the larger region around the distorted galaxy, but our new image has overcome these limitations.”