Image of the Day: Two Supermassive Black Holes on Collision Course in Same Galaxy

 

New X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory added to an image previously captured by the Hubble Space Telescope created this amazing composite image of two supermassive black holes on the verge of colliding in the center of the ultraluminous infrared galaxy NGC 6240, are only 3,000 light-years apart in the constellation Ophiuchus. Astronomers think the two will eventually combine into a single, larger black hole. This detection of a binary black hole supports the idea that black holes grow to enormous masses in the centers of galaxies by merging with other black holes.

NGC 6240 is the remnant of a merger between two smaller galaxies. The collision between the two progenitor galaxies has resulted in a single larger galaxy with two distinct nuclei and a highly disturbed structure, including faint extensions and loops.

Earlier X-ray observatories had shown that the central region was an X-ray source, but astronomers did not know what was producing the X-rays. Radio, infrared, and optical observations had detected two bright nuclei, but their exact nature also remained a mystery.

Chandra was able to show that the X-rays were coming from the two nuclei, and determine their X-ray spectra. These cosmic fingerprints revealed features that are characteristic of supermassive black holes - an excess of high-energy photons from gas swirling around a black hole, and X-rays from fluorescing iron atoms in gas near black holes.

NGC 6240 is a prime example of a "starburst" galaxy in which stars are forming, evolving, and exploding at an exceptionally rapid rate due to a relatively recent merger (30 million years ago). Heat generated by this activity created the extensive multimillion degree Celsius gas seen in this image.

Casey Kazan. Adapted from materials provide by the Chandra X-ray Observatory/NASA/Harvard

Source: http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2002/0192/

Comments

[Ivar Nielsen]

Binary galaxies are the norm as well as binary stars.

Maybe this example is just the beginning of two galaxies eventually moving away from each other in stead of the usual talk of the non sense "black hole gravity theory".

- When a molecular cloud is hit by a cosmic explosion, swirls are created and these swirls accelerates and concentrates the clouds and heat them up until the melting point and both melted spheres later on explodes horizontally out from the rotation plane, creating two new galaxies.

Why make it difficult when you can make it naturally?

Ivar Nielsen
Natural Philosopher