Tuesday, January 21, 2025

Astronomers Catch Unprecedented Features at Brink of Active Black Hole

In this artist’s concept, a stream of matter trails a white dwarf (sphere at lower right) orbiting within the innermost accretion disk surrounding 1ES 1927’s supermassive black hole. Astronomers developed this scenario to explain the evolution of rapid X-ray oscillations detected by ESA’s (European Space Agency) XMM-Newton satellite. ESA’s LISA mission, due to launch in the next decade, should be able to confirm the presence of an orbiting white dwarf by detecting the gravitational waves it produces. Hi-Res File

Radio images of 1ES 1927+654 reveal emerging structures that appear to be jets of plasma erupting from both sides of the galaxy’s central black hole following a strong radio flare. The first image, taken in June 2023, shows no sign of the jet, possibly because hot gas screened it from view. Then, starting in February 2024, the features emerge and expand away from the galaxy’s center, covering a total distance of about half a light-year as measured from the center of each structure. Hi-Res File



International teams of astronomers monitoring a supermassive black hole in the heart of a distant galaxy have detected features never seen before using data from NASA missions and other facilities including the National Science Foundation (NSF) National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NSF NRAO) Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA). The features include the launch of a plasma jet moving at nearly one-third the speed of light and unusual, rapid X-ray fluctuations likely arising from near the very edge of the black hole.

The source is 1ES 1927+654, a galaxy located about 270 million light-years away in the constellation Draco. It harbors a central black hole with a mass equivalent to about 1.4 million Suns.

“In 2018, the black hole began changing its properties right before our eyes, with a major optical, ultraviolet, and X-ray outburst,” said Eileen Meyer, an associate professor at UMBC (University of Maryland Baltimore County). “Many teams have been keeping a close eye on it ever since.”

She presented her team’s findings at the 245th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in National Harbor, Maryland. A paper led by Meyer describing the radio results was published Jan. 13 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

After the outburst, the black hole appeared to return to a quiet state, with a lull in activity for nearly a year. But by April 2023, a team led by Sibasish Laha at UMBC and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, had noted a steady, months-long increase in low-energy X-rays in measurements by NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and NICER (Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer) telescope on the International Space Station. This monitoring program, which also includes observations from NASA’s NuSTAR(Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) and ESA’s (European Space Agency) XMM-Newton mission, continues.

The increase in X-rays triggered the UMBC team to make new radio observations, which indicated a strong and highly unusual radio flare was underway. The scientists then began intensive observations using the NSF NRAO’s VLBA and other facilities. The VLBA, a network of radio telescopes spread across the U.S., combines signals from individual dishes to create what amounts to a powerful, high-resolution radio camera. This allows the VLBA to detect features less than a light-year across at 1ES 1927’s distance.

This text is adapted from a press release shared by NASA. Read their complete release here.
You can access high-resolution versions of these supplemental images in SVS here.


Original release text by Francis Reddy
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.





About NRAO

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) is a facility of the U.S. National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.



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