STScI: Flash from Milky Way's Black Hole Illuminated Gas Outside Our Galaxy

Find out the latest thinking about our universe.
Post Reply
User avatar
bystander
Apathetic Retiree
Posts: 21571
Joined: Mon Aug 28, 2006 2:06 pm
Location: Oklahoma

STScI: Flash from Milky Way's Black Hole Illuminated Gas Outside Our Galaxy

Post by bystander » Fri Jun 05, 2020 3:47 pm

Intense Flash from Milky Way's Black Hole
Illuminated Gas Far Outside of Our Galaxy

NASA | GSFC | STScI | HubbleSite | 2020 Jun 02
About 3.5 million years ago, the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy unleashed an enormous burst of energy. Our primitive ancestors, already afoot on the African plains, likely would have witnessed this flare as a ghostly glow high overhead in the constellation Sagittarius. It might have persisted for 1 million years.

Now, eons later, astronomers are using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope's unique capabilities to uncover even more clues about this cataclysmic explosion. Looking to the far outskirts of our galaxy, they found that the black hole's floodlight reached so far into space it illuminated a vast train of gas trailing the Milky Way's two prominent satellite galaxies: the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and its companion, the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC).

The black hole outburst was probably caused by a large hydrogen cloud up to 100,000 times the Sun's mass falling onto the disk of material swirling near the central black hole. The resulting outburst sent cones of blistering ultraviolet radiation above and below the plane of the galaxy and deep into space.

The radiation cone that blasted out of the Milky Way’s south pole lit up a massive ribbon-like gas structure called the Magellanic Stream. The flash lit up a portion of the stream, ionizing its hydrogen (enough to make 100 million Suns) by stripping atoms of their electrons. ...

Kinematics of the Magellanic Stream and Implications for its Ionization ~ Andrew J. Fox et al
Know the quiet place within your heart and touch the rainbow of possibility; be
alive to the gentle breeze of communication, and please stop being such a jerk.
— Garrison Keillor

Post Reply