The inexorable spiral of matter down the gullet of a giant black hole has been captured in unprecedented detail by the Very Large Telescope in Chile.
NGC 1097, a spiral galaxy about 45 million light years from Earth, glows relatively brightly at its centre in visible and X-ray wavelengths. That suggests a black hole is devouring surrounding gas and dust there, but the glare from nearby stars has overwhelmed any detailed images of the process.
Advertisement
Now, astronomers have used one of the VLT鈥檚 four 8-metre telescopes to take near-infrared images of matter whirling towards the galaxy鈥檚 heart.
They made the observation using adaptive optics, a software technique that corrects for the blurring effect of the Earth鈥檚 atmosphere. Then they subtracted the bright light from stars in the region to reveal dim spiral arms of dust and gas streaming to within a few tens of light years of the black hole鈥檚 mouth. Scroll down for additional images.
鈥淭his is possibly the first time that a detailed view of the channelling process of matter, from the main part of the galaxy down to the very end in the nucleus, is released,鈥� says Almudena Prieto, at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, and lead author of the study.
Journal reference: Astronomical Journal (vol 130, p 1472)
