Image of the Day: Strange Red Galaxy with a Monster Black Hole 100 Million X's Sun
A monster black hole 100 million times the mass of the Sun is feeding off gas, dust and a ring of stars at the centre of Galaxy NGC-1097 50 million light-years away. The star-ringed black hole forms the eye of the galaxy which was photographed by the US space agency's Spitzer Space Telescope in California.
The odd spiral galaxy extends long arms of red stars into space. But Nasa said the black hole at the centre of the galaxy in which Earth is situated is tame by comparison to NGC-1097, with the mass of just 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 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. The galaxy's red spiral arms and swirling spokes between them show dust heated by newborn stars, while older populations of stars scattered through the galaxy are blue. A fuzzy blue dot to the left of the image shows a companion galaxy, while other dots are either stars in the Milky Way, or other more distant galaxies.
The Daily Galaxy via NASA Spitzer
"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 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. The galaxy's red spiral arms and swirling spokes between them show dust heated by newborn stars, while older populations of stars scattered through the galaxy are blue. A fuzzy blue dot to the left of the image shows a companion galaxy, while other dots are either stars in the Milky Way, or other more distant galaxies.
The Daily Galaxy via NASA Spitzer
Comments
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Quote: "The star-ringed black hole forms the eye of the galaxy".
What is wrong with the cosmologists interpretive skills?
AD: To me the "black eye" on the image is very bright indeed!?
- Looking at the image, the structure of this galaxy clearly shows a galaxy in an outwards directed movement, with a suddenly explosive creation of the 2 bars, abruptly turning 90 degree out in the galactic arms, showing the evidence of a still swirling momentum from the galactic nuclear core.
- It seem to me that the cosmologistst are blinding themselves via the otherwise discarded Newtonian "laws of gravity" that does not count in macrocosmos.
Posted by: Ivar Nielsen | March 01, 2011 at 05:18 AM
I think you have found something utterly more important in this image look approximately 45 degrees to the lower right of the red galaxy do you see it? A dark galaxy is magnifying a group of distant luminous objects by gravitational lensing, or am I just seeing what appears to be an arch of lights that just happen to be there?
Posted by: the eye | March 02, 2011 at 06:58 PM