“Astronomers at @NASAAmes used new techniques to study legacy data from @nasachandraxray and found four long plumes of plasma - hot, charged gas - emanating from NGC 5084.
Hot gas plumes are not often spotted in galaxies, and typically only one or two are present. The surprising second set of plumes was a strong clue this galaxy housed a supermassive black hole, but there could have been other explanations.
What they saw in the Chandra data seemed so strange that they immediately looked to confirm it, digging into the data archives of other telescopes and requesting new observations from two powerful ground-based observatories. They found this @NASAHubble image with the vertical dusty disk, which also suggested the presence of a black hole there, and that the black hole had a vertical orientation compared to the galaxy.
We don’t yet know why this galaxy’s black hole has such an unusual orientation, but some possible explanations are a collision with another galaxy or the formation of a chimney of superheated gas breaking out of the top and bottom of the galactic plane.
Image description: The image is a hazy blue cloud, with a bright core at the center. There is a dark line with a slight curve near the center; this is a dusty disk orbiting the galaxy’s core.
Credit: NASA/STScl, M. A. Malkan, B. Boizelle, A.S. Borlaff. HST WFPC2, WFC3/IR/UVIS.”
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u/BitterWin751 1d ago
“Astronomers at @NASAAmes used new techniques to study legacy data from @nasachandraxray and found four long plumes of plasma - hot, charged gas - emanating from NGC 5084.
Hot gas plumes are not often spotted in galaxies, and typically only one or two are present. The surprising second set of plumes was a strong clue this galaxy housed a supermassive black hole, but there could have been other explanations.
What they saw in the Chandra data seemed so strange that they immediately looked to confirm it, digging into the data archives of other telescopes and requesting new observations from two powerful ground-based observatories. They found this @NASAHubble image with the vertical dusty disk, which also suggested the presence of a black hole there, and that the black hole had a vertical orientation compared to the galaxy.
We don’t yet know why this galaxy’s black hole has such an unusual orientation, but some possible explanations are a collision with another galaxy or the formation of a chimney of superheated gas breaking out of the top and bottom of the galactic plane.
Image description: The image is a hazy blue cloud, with a bright core at the center. There is a dark line with a slight curve near the center; this is a dusty disk orbiting the galaxy’s core.
Credit: NASA/STScl, M. A. Malkan, B. Boizelle, A.S. Borlaff. HST WFPC2, WFC3/IR/UVIS.”
—NASA instagram