Rose of star formation around distant supermassive black hole

NGC 1097

Credit: ESO/TIMER survey

Captured with the MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), this image of the distant spiral galaxy NGC 1097 shows a textbook example of a star-bursting nuclear ring. Located 45 million light-years away from Earth, in the constellation of Fornax, this ring lies at the very centre of its galaxy. It spans only 5,000 light years across, being dwarfed by the full size of its host galaxy, which extends some tens of thousands of light-years beyond its centre.

The darker lanes seen in this MUSE image show dust, gas and debris from the galaxy (or possibly from a satellite galaxy), which are being funnelled into the supermassive black hole at its centre. This process heats up the surrounding matter forming an accretion disc around the black hole and launching huge amounts of energy into the surrounding area. Nearby dust is heated up and star formation accelerates in the area around the supermassive black hole, forming the star-bursting nuclear ring shown in pink and purple tones in the image.

MUSE, which stands for Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer, is attached to Yepun, one of the four, 8.2-metre telescopes that make up the VLT at ESO’s Paranal Observatory. Its unique design has allowed researchers to map complex mechanisms within many galaxies and analyse the formation of stars and star clusters.

Source: ESO/potw

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Unique Chemical Composition Surrounding Supermassive Black Hole – A Step toward Development of New Black Hole Exploration Method

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) successfully captured a detailed image of high density molecular gas around an active galactic nucleus harboring a supermassive black hole. The observations at the highest ever achieved reveal a unique chemical composition characterized by enhancement of hydrogen cyanide (HCN) around the black hole. An research team thought a high temperature affected by the black hole caused this peculiar chemical properties. The team expect that this unique chemical properties can be used to find black holes hidden behind dust. 

Spiral galaxy NGC 1097 observed with European Southern Observatory’s Very large Telescope in optical wavelength (left) and the central 2100 light years observed with ALMA (right). The ALMA observations reveal intense emission from dust around the central black hole and in the circum-nuclear star burst ring. The star sign shows the location of the emission peak in near infrared, which reflects the star formation activity, whereas the central plus sign shows the location of the radio emission peak in the wavelength of 6 cm which comes from the active supermassive black hole. The emission peak position in the ALMA image agrees well with that of 6 cm emission. This ensures that ALMA detects the emission from the vicinity of the central black hole.

The research findings are presented in the article “Submillimeter ALMA Observation of the Dense Gas in the Low-Luminosity Type-1 Active Nucleus of NGC 1097” published in the Publication of the Astronomical Society of Japan, Vol. 65, of October 25, 2013.  

Link  

• Unique Chemical Composition Surrounding Supermassive Black Hole – A Step toward Development of New Black Hole Exploration Method

•  Graduate School of Science, the University of Tokyo

Source: NAOJ - National Astronomical Observatory of Japan

A wanderer dancing the dance of stars and space

NGC  1097

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
Acknowledgement: E. Sturdivant

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope provides us this week with a spectacular image of the bright star-forming ring that surrounds the heart of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1097. In this image, the larger-scale structure of the galaxy is barely visible: its comparatively dim spiral arms, which surround its heart in a loose embrace, reach out beyond the edges of this frame.

This face-on galaxy, lying 45 million light-years away from Earth in the southern constellation of Fornax (The Furnace), is particularly attractive for astronomers. NGC 1097 is a Seyfert galaxy. Lurking at the very centre of the galaxy, a supermassive black hole 100 million times the mass of our Sun is gradually sucking in the matter around it. The area immediately around the black hole shines powerfully with radiation coming from the material falling in.

The distinctive ring around the black hole is bursting with new star formation due to an inflow of material toward the central bar of the galaxy. These star-forming regions are glowing brightly thanks to emission from clouds of ionised hydrogen. The ring is around 5000 light-years across, although the spiral arms of the galaxy extend tens of thousands of light-years beyond it.

NGC 1097 is also pretty exciting for supernova hunters. The galaxy experienced three supernovae (the violent deaths of high-mass stars) in the 11-year span between 1992 and 2003. This is definitely a galaxy worth checking on a regular basis.

However, what it is really exciting about NGC 1097 is that it is not wandering alone through space. It has two small galaxy companions, which dance “the dance of stars and the dance of space” like the gracious dancer of the famous poem The Dancer by Khalil Gibran.

The satellite galaxies are NGC 1097A, an elliptical galaxy orbiting 42 000 light-years from the centre of NGC 1097 and a small dwarf galaxy named NGC 1097B. Both galaxies are located out beyond the frames of this image and they cannot be seen. Astronomers have indications that NGC 1097 and NGC 1097A have interacted in the past.

This picture was taken with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys using visual and infrared filters.

A version of this image was submitted to the Hubble’s Hidden Treasures image processing competition by contestant Eedresha Sturdivant.

Source: ESA/Hubble - Space Telescope

 

A Galactic Embrace

NGC 1097
Credit: ESO/R. Gendler

Two galaxies, about 50 million light-years away, are locked in a galactic embrace — literally. The Seyfert galaxy NGC 1097, in the constellation of Fornax (The Furnace), is seen in this image taken with the VIMOS instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). A comparatively tiny elliptical companion galaxy, NGC 1097A, is also visible in the top left. There is evidence that NGC 1097 and NGC 1097A have been interacting in the recent past.

Although NGC 1097 seems to be wrapping its companion in its spiral arms, this is no gentle motherly giant. The larger galaxy also has four faint jets — too extended and faint to be seen in this image — that emerge from its centre, forming an X-shaped pattern, and which are the longest visible-wavelength jets of any known galaxy. The jets are thought to be the remnants of a dwarf galaxy that was disrupted and cannibalised by the much larger NGC 1097 up to a few billion years ago.

These unusual jets are not the galaxy’s only intriguing feature. As previously mentioned, NGC 1097 is a Seyfert galaxy, meaning that it contains a supermassive black hole in its centre. However, the core of NGC 1097 is relatively faint, suggesting that the central black hole is not currently swallowing large quantities of gas and stars. Instead, the most striking feature of the galaxy’s centre is the ring of bright knots surrounding the nucleus. These knots are thought to be large bubbles of glowing hydrogen gas about 750–2500 light-years across, ionised by the intense ultraviolet light of young stars, and they indicate that the ring is a site of vigorous star formation

With this distinctive central star-forming ring, and the addition of numerous bluish clusters of hot, young stars dotted through its spiral arms, NGC 1097 makes a stunning visual object.

The data were originally taken in 2004 (see eso0438) with the VIMOS instrument on the VLT, and additional colour information from an image taken by amateur astronomer Robert Gendler has been superimposed. The VLT data were taken through three visible-light filters: R (at a wavelength of 652 nanometres, and shown here in red), V (a wavelength of 540 nanometres, shown in green), and B (456 nanometres, shown in blue). The image covers a region of approximately 7.7 x 6.6 arcminutes on the sky.

NASA's Spitzer Images Out-of-this-World Galaxy

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/The SINGS Team (SSC/Caltech)

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has imaged a wild creature of the dark — a coiled galaxy with an eye-like object at its center.

The galaxy, called NGC 1097, is located 50 million light-years away. It is spiral-shaped like our Milky Way, with long, spindly arms of stars. The "eye" at the center of the galaxy is actually a monstrous black hole surrounded by a ring of stars. In this color-coded infrared view from Spitzer, the area around the invisible black hole is blue and the ring of stars, white.

The black hole is huge, about 100 million times the mass of our sun, and is feeding off gas and dust along with the occasional unlucky star. Our Milky Way's central black hole is tame by comparison, with a mass of a few million suns.

"The fate of this black hole and others like it is an active area of research," said George Helou, deputy director of NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "Some theories hold that the black hole might quiet down and eventually enter a more dormant state like our Milky Way black hole."

The ring around the black hole is bursting with new star formation. An inflow of material toward the central bar of the galaxy is causing the ring to light up with new stars.

"The ring itself is a fascinating object worthy of study because it is forming stars at a very high rate," said Kartik Sheth, an astronomer at NASA's Spitzer Science Center. Sheth and Helou are part of a team that made the observations.

In the Spitzer image, infrared light with shorter wavelengths is blue, while longer-wavelength light is red. The galaxy's red spiral arms and the swirling spokes seen between the arms show dust heated by newborn stars. Older populations of stars scattered through the galaxy are blue. The fuzzy blue dot to the left, which appears to fit snuggly between the arms, is a companion galaxy.

"The companion galaxy that looks as if it's playing peek-a-boo through the larger galaxy could have plunged through, poking a hole," said Helou. "But we don't know this for sure. It could also just happen to be aligned with a gap in the arms."

Other dots in the picture are either nearby stars in our galaxy, or distant galaxies.

This image was taken during Spitzer's "cold mission," which lasted more than five-and-a-half years. The telescope ran out of coolant needed to chill its infrared instruments on May 15, 2009. Two of its infrared channels will still work perfectly during the new "warm mission," which is expected to begin in a week or so, once the observatory has been recalibrated and warms to its new temperature of around 30 Kelvin (about minus 406 degrees Fahrenheit).


About the Object

Object name: NGC 1097, Arp 77
Object type: Galaxy
Position (J2000): RA: 02h 46m 19.00s Dec: -30° 16' 29.00"
Distance: 45,000,000 Light Years
Constellation: Fornax

Instrument: IRAC

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, also in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. Spitzer's infrared array camera, which made the observations, was built by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The instrument's principal investigator is Giovanni Fazio of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

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