After receiving a “tip” from the Chandra X-ray telescope, NASA scientists used the Hubble Space Telescope to detect a distant galaxy like a “cosmic crime scene” and discovered a strange, tilted black hole.
sideways black hole Discovered in the galaxy NGC 5084, a lenticular (lens-shaped) galaxy A constellation located about 80 million light-years from Earth Virgo. Black holes rotate in unexpected directions relative to surrounding galaxies.
The team learned of the black hole’s existence when they discovered two plasma plumes, one extending above and below the plane of the galaxy, and the other extending across the galaxy, intersecting each other and forming an “X” shape . This kind of galaxy structure is something astronomers have never seen before.
“It is rare to detect two pairs of X-ray plumes in a galaxy,” said team member Pamela Marcum, an astrophysicist at Ames Research Center said in a statement. “Their unusual cross-shaped structure combined with the ‘overturned’ dusty disk gives us a unique insight into the history of this galaxy.”
The scientists behind the discovery believe that a dramatic event in NGC 5084’s history may have caused the black hole to tip over like a “cosmic hit-and-run.”
What does the X mark?
The team made the discovery in archival materials chandra Thanks to new imaging analysis they developed. The technique, called Selective Amplification of Ultra-Noisy Astronomical Signals, or SAUNAS, shines low-brightness X-rays from NASA’s powerful X-ray Space Telescope, revealing strange X-shaped double plasma plumes.
This is strange, because when writers looked at X-rays from massive galaxies back in the day, they expected Find them evenly distributed. This uniformity creates a ball of high-energy light. The sight of concentrated X-ray shapes heralds a dramatic event in the galaxy’s history.
The discovery was so strange that scientists immediately scrambled to confirm it. They did this by searching the archives of other telescopes and new observations from two powerful ground-based observatories.
Observations from Harper Backed by data Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA), a cluster of 66 radio antennas located in northern Chile, revealed that NGC 5084 has a ring of dusty material at its center that is turning sideways. This suggests that not only is a black hole lurking at the center of the galaxy, but that the object is strangely rotating at a 90-degree angle to NGC 5084.
Follow-up examinations of NGC 5084 helped the team observe the galaxy and its flanking black hole over a wide range of light wavelengths.
“It’s like looking at a crime scene with multiple lights,” team leader Alejandro Serrano Borav, a scientist at Ames Research Center, said in a statement. “Putting all the photos together show that NGC 5084 has changed significantly in the recent past.”
So what “crime” does the team suspect happened in NGC 5084 and knocked down the black hole?
Currently, the “prime suspect” in this cosmic detective novel is Collision with another galaxy It creates a plasma “chimney” that erupts from the top and bottom of NGC 5084’s plane.
Although more investigation of NGC 5084 is needed to properly determine the violent events that shaped its strange structure, this study demonstrates the power of archival material, even dating back three decades, to help scientists make new and unique discoveries.
These data are especially powerful when combined with innovative processing techniques such as the one developed by Borough and colleagues.
The team’s findings were published on Wednesday (December 18) in The Astrophysical Journal.