Predicting a Black Hole Merger

Produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute’s Office of Public Outreach in collaboration with NASA’s Universe of Learning partners: Caltech/IPAC, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

 

Video imagery:

·       Visible-light image of galaxy NGC 4424: NASA/ESA/STScI

·       Galaxy NGC 4424 with inset: Visible-light: NASA/ESA/STScI; Infrared: NASA/ESA/STScI; X-ray: NASA/CXC/Swinburne Univ. of Technology/A. Graham et al.

·       Close-up of infrared and x-ray detection: Infrared: NASA/ESA/STScI; X-ray: NASA/CXC/Swinburne Univ. of Technology/A. Graham et al.

·       Galaxy NGC 4424 with inset: Visible-light: NASA/ESA/STScI; Infrared: NASA/ESA/STScI; X-ray: NASA/CXC/Swinburne Univ. of Technology/A. Graham et al.

 
Writer: Leah Ramsay

Designer: Leah Hustak, Joseph Olmsted

Science review: Dr. Chris Britt

Education review: Jim Manning

Music from Music for Non-Profits

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Objects and gases of various colors in outer space. Text, News from the Universe

 

August 26, 2022. Predicting a Black Hole Merger

 

This large spiral galaxy is in the process of absorbing a smaller galaxy after the two collided.

 

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope show evidence of the collision that is not detectable in visible light.

 

The red area is a cluster of stars detected in infrared light that is being elongated by strong gravity.

 

The red star cluster is likely all that remains of the smaller galaxy.

 

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X-rays, in blue, may indicate the smaller galaxy had a supermassive black hole that is now becoming part of the larger galaxy.

 

The large galaxy should already have a supermassive black hole of its own. Eventually the two black holes will merge.

 

The black hole merger process would create gravitational waves, or ripples in the fabric of space-time - an exciting emerging area of observational astronomy.

 

This news was brought to you in part by the Chandra X-Ray Center in Cambridge, MA