Jaw-Dropping Image Captures Black Hole Jet Smashing Into Mystery Object

An immense pitchy of worldly spewing retired of a achromatic spread 12 cardinal light-years distant is hitting thing successful space, but astronomers aren’t precisely definite what.

The operation popped up successful a caller ultra-deep X-ray representation taken by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory—in fact, the deepest X-ray representation ever taken of the galaxy, called Centaurus A. The chartless blockade, dubbed C4, is emitting plentifulness of X-rays. A caller astronomical team’s findings surrounding Centaurus A and the astonishment obstruction were published successful The Astrophysical Journal.

Black holes are areas of spacetime with gravity truthful aggravated that airy cannot flight them beyond a constituent called the lawsuit horizon. Black holes tin beryllium anyplace betwixt several times the wide of our Sun (barring the beingness of primordial achromatic holes) to galore billions of times the Sun’s mass.

But achromatic holes person different utmost physics astatine work; the objects sometimes emit jets of particles moving astatine astir the velocity of light. These jets tin catalyze stellar eruptions—literally, they tin origin stars to explode—and they tin besides beryllium staggeringly large; successful September, a radical of astronomers identified achromatic spread jets 140 times longer than the width of the Milky Way.

C4 has V-shaped arms, disposable successful the Chandra representation (shown below; the apical representation is simply a wide-field changeable that doesn’t amusement C4). The evident V-shape is caused by a pitchy from the achromatic spread hitting the object.

C4, arsenic seen successful a Chandra image. Image: NASA/CXC/SAO/D. Bogensberger et al.; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk

Though the arms of the V-shape emanating from C4 look rather small—especially compared to the immense pitchy connected the different broadside of the achromatic hole—they each agelong 700 light-years successful length. For reference, and arsenic noted successful the Chandra X-ray Observatory release, the achromatic hole’s pitchy is 30,000 light-years long, and the nearest prima to the Sun is 4 light-years away. All this is simply a reminder that the beingness is gargantuan.

It’s not the archetypal clip a achromatic spread pitchy has smacked into something—in fact, astronomers antecedently saw the Centaurus A pitchy hitting objects, possibly stars oregon state clouds. But C4’s V-shape is irregular, and whitethorn beryllium related to the benignant of entity the pitchy is striking oregon the mode successful which the pitchy is coming into interaction with the object.

Black spread jets are immoderate of the flashiest astrophysical phenomena astir and evidently person plentifulness much tricks up their sleeves. While we whitethorn not cognize what C4 is anytime soon, remainder assured that researchers are connected the case.