NASA | MSFC | SAO | Chandra X-ray Observatory | 2017 May 11
[img3="Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/NRAO/D.-C.Kim; Optical: NASA/STScI;Supermassive holes are generally stationary objects, sitting at the centers of most galaxies. However, using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes, astronomers recently hunted down what could be a supermassive black hole that may be on the move.
Illustration: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss"]http://chandra.si.edu/photo/2017/rsmbh/rsmbh_lg.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]
This possible renegade black hole, which contains about 160 million times the mass of our Sun, is located in an elliptical galaxy about 3.9 billion light years from Earth. Astronomers are interested in these moving supermassive black holes because they may reveal more about the properties of these enigmatic objects.
This black hole may have "recoiled," in the terminology used by scientists, when two smaller supermassive black holes collided and merged to form an even larger one. At the same time, this collision would have generated gravitational waves that emitted more strongly in one direction than others. This newly formed black hole could have received a kick in the opposite direction of those stronger gravitational waves. This kick would have pushed the black hole out of the galaxy's center, as depicted in the artist's illustration. ...
A Potential Recoiling Supermassive Black Hole, CXO J101527.2+625911 - D.-C. Kim et al
- Astrophysical Journal 840(2):71 (10 May 2017) DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/aa6030
arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1704.05549 > 18 Apr 2017
