A fleet of spacecraft including NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered unprecedented details in the surroundings of a supermassive black hole. Observations reveal huge bullets of gas being driven away from the gravitational monster and a corona of very hot gas hovering above the disk of matter that is falling into the black hole.
A team led by Jelle Kaastra of SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research made use of data from ESA's XMM-Newton and INTEGRAL spacecraft (which study X-rays and gamma rays, respectively), the Hubble Space Telescope (for ultraviolet observations with the COS instrument), and NASA's Chandra (X-ray) Observatory and Swift (gamma-ray) satellites.
The black hole that the team chose to study lies at the heart of the galaxy Markarian 509 (Mrk 509), 500 million light-years away. This black hole is colossal, containing 300 million times the mass of the Sun, and is growing more massive every day as it continues to feed on surrounding matter, which glows brightly as it forms a rotating disk around the black hole. Mrk 509 was chosen because it is known to vary in brightness, which indicates that the flow of matter is turbulent.
This image of Mrk 509 was taken in April 2007 with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. But using a large number of telescopes that are sensitive to different wavelengths of light gave astronomers unprecedented coverage running from the infrared, through the visible, ultraviolet, X-rays, and into the gamma-ray band.
The study is presented in a series of seven papers in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, with more expected to be published in coming months.
A full account of the research can be read on the SRON website at http://www.sron.nl .
Credits
Image: NASA, ESA, G. Kriss (STScI), and J. de Plaa (SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research);Acknowledgment: B. Peterson (Ohio State University);
Science: NASA, ESA, J. Kaastra (SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research), and G. Kriss (STScI)
| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | Markarian 509, Mrk 509 |
| Object Description | Seyfert Galaxy |
| R.A. Position | 20h 44m 9.73s |
| Dec. Position | -10° 43' 24.53" |
| Constellation | Aquarius |
| Distance | About 460 million light-years or 140 million parsecs |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description | The WFPC2 image was created from HST data from proposal : B. Peterson (Ohio State University), M. Bentz (Georgia State University), R. Pogge (Ohio State University), and M. Vestergaard (University of Copenhagen, Niels Bohr Institute). The COS observations were from the HST proposal : J. Kaastra (SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research) et al. The science paper lead is G. Kriss (STScI). |
| Instrument | HST>WFPC2 and COS |
| Exposure Dates | April 1, 2007, Exposure Time: 24 minutes (WFPC2), and December 10-11, 2009, Exposure Time: 7.2 hours (COS) |
| Filters | WFPC2: F547M (Strömgren y) COS Grisms: G130M, G185M |
| About The Image | |
| Color Info | This image was originally black and white and recorded only overall brightness. These brightness values were translated into a range of bluish hues. Such color "maps" can be useful in helping to distinguish subtly varying brightness in an image. |
| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | A name or catalog number that astronomers use to identify an astronomical object. |
| Object Description | The type of astronomical object. |
| R.A. Position | Right ascension – analogous to longitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Dec. Position | Declination – analogous to latitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Constellation | One of 88 recognized regions of the celestial sphere in which the object appears. |
| Distance | The physical distance from Earth to the astronomical object. Distances within our solar system are usually measured in Astronomical Units (AU). Distances between stars are usually measured in light-years. Interstellar distances can also be measured in parsecs. |
| Dimensions | The physical size of the object or the apparent angle it subtends on the sky. |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description |
|
| Instrument | The science instrument used to produce the data. |
| Exposure Dates | The date(s) that the telescope made its observations and the total exposure time. |
| Filters | The camera filters that were used in the science observations. |
| About The Image | |
| Image Credit | The primary individuals and institutions responsible for the content. |
| Publication Date | The date and time the release content became public. |
| Color Info | A brief description of the methods used to convert telescope data into the color image being presented. |
| Orientation | The rotation of the image on the sky with respect to the north pole of the celestial sphere. |
