Runaway Black Hole

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:

·        Illustration of runaway black hole with trail of stars: NASA, ESA, Leah Hustak (STScI)

·        Unannotated wide field image of trail of stars behind black hole: NASA, ESA, Pieter van Dokkum (Yale). Image processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

·         Annotated image with inset zoomed in on trail of stars behind black hole: NASA, ESA, Pieter van Dokkum (Yale). Image processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

·        Illustration of runaway black hole with trail of stars: NASA, ESA, Leah Hustak (STScI)

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Galaxies, planets, stars, and gases of various colors in outer space. Text, News from the Universe

 

April 17, 2023. Runaway Black Hole. Illustration. In the lower left, a black sphere sucks in purple, orange, and white gasses in a spiral around it. The gasses stretch down from the upper right, where a cluster of bright stars hangs in space.

 

Text, Two's company, but three's a crowd. astronomers suspect that a chaotic dance between three supermassive black holes in merging galaxies ended with one being ejected.

 

The never-before-seen phenomenon at first appeared as a random streak on the image captured by NASA's Hubble Space telescope.

 

In the telescope view, orange, white, and blue galaxies hang in the black of space. Near the center, a long narrow streak of white stretches at a slight diagonal near a galaxy.

 

Text, Further investigation showed the streak was a 200,000- light-year long trail of young stars. A closeup of the streak shows it broken into numerous red, blue, and white dots.

 

Text, As the black hole plowed through the intergalactic gas at supersonic speeds, it heated the gas, which cooled and compressed, triggering star formation.

 

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This news was brought to you in part by the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, MD.