Galaxy's Huge Black Hole Puts on Spectacular Fireworks Show - Video

The supermassive black hole at the center of a far-off galaxy is putting on a fireworks display of cosmic proportions.

Scientists captured the brilliant display in new images and a video tour of the spiral galaxy Messier 106 (also called NGC 4258).

NSF Karl Janksy Very Large Array

An amazing composite picture was created by combining data from three NASA telescopes and a National Science Foundation (NSF) Karl Janksy Very Large Array trained on Messier 106, which is about 23 million light-years away.

While the galaxy is spiral in shape, like the Milky Way, Messier 106 has two extra swirling arms that glow in X-ray, optical and radio light.

These features are called anomalous arms and intersect the galaxy at an angle instead of aligning with the main galactic disk.

The combination of data from multiple telescopes revealed that the swirling arms of Messier 106 are streams of shock waves and superheated gas.

The NSF telescope picked up radio waves from high-energy particles streaming from the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy.

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope

Infrared light data gathered by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows that these bursts of particles create shock waves, similar to sonic booms, when they strike the main disk of the galaxy.

The shock waves heat up huge pockets of hydrogen gas to thousands of degrees.

Spiral Galaxy Messier 106

Spiral Galaxy Messier 106 has two extra swirling arms that glow in X-ray, optical and radio light. 

Credit: X-ray: NASA /CXC /Caltech /P.Ogle et al; Optical: NASA /STScI; IR: NASA /JPL-Caltech; Radio: NSF /NRAO /VLA

The new composite image released by NASA earlier this month shows X-rays seen by NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory in blue; radio waves captured by the NSF's Karl Janksy Very Large Array are shown in purple; visible light data from the Hubble telescope can be seen in yellow and blue; and infrared light from the Spitzer telescope in red.

Chandra X-Ray images reveal huge, superheated gas bubbles above and below the plane of the galaxy.

This suggests that much of the gas inside the galaxy is heated to millions of degrees and then rides along the shock waves streaming from the black hole to the outer regions of the galaxy.

Researchers predict all the gas from the galaxy will be cast out within the next 300 million years unless it is somehow replenished. Since most of the gas is already gone, less gas is available for star formation.

Researchers using Spitzer estimate that stars are forming in Messier 106 almost 10 times more slowly than they are in the Milky Way.

The black hole at the center of Messier 106 is about 10 times larger than the black hole in the Milky Way and is sucking in material much more quickly.

Researchers hope to learn more about how the black hole is influencing the galaxy. The results of the new galaxy study were published June 20 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Black hole fireworks in nearby galaxy Messier 106

A galaxy about 23 million light-years away is the site of impressive, ongoing, fireworks. 

Rather than paper, powder, and fire, this galactic light show involves a giant black hole, shock waves, and vast reservoirs of gas. 

Credit: NASA /CXC /JPL-Caltech /STScI /NSF /NRAO /VLA

Celebrants this Fourth of July will enjoy the dazzling lights and booming shock waves from the explosions of fireworks.

A similarly styled event is taking place in the galaxy Messier 106 (NGC 4258), as seen by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Herschel Space Observatory. Herschel is a European Space Agency mission with important NASA contributions.

Energetic jets, which blast from Messier 106's central black hole, are heating up material in the galaxy and thus making it glow, like the ingredients in a firework.

The jets also power shock waves that are driving gases out of the galaxy's interior.

Those gases constitute the fuel for churning out new stars. A new study estimates the shock waves have already warmed and ejected two-thirds of the gas from the center of Messier 106.

With a reduced ability to birth new stars, Messier 106 appears to be transitioning into a barren, so-called lenticular galaxy full of old, red stars. Lenticular galaxies are flat disks without prominent spiral arms.

"Jets from the supermassive black hole at the center of Messier 106 are having a profound influence on the available gas for making stars in this galaxy," said Patrick Ogle, an astrophysicist at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and lead author of a new paper describing the results.

"This process may eventually transform the spiral galaxy Messier 106 into a lenticular galaxy, depriving it of the raw material to form stars."

Many galaxies contain a central black hole that actively "feeds" upon nearby gas.

Some of the material, as it draws toward the black hole, dramatically speeds up and violently spews out as twin jets near the black hole's poles.

As one of the Milky Way's closest galactic neighbors, Messier 106 offers a great opportunity for investigating these high-powered jets.

Messier 106 is 23.5 million light-years distant, and visible with binoculars in the constellation Canes Venatici.

For the new study, researchers used data obtained with the Spitzer infrared telescope before the observatory ran out of coolant in 2009, as planned.

The data amount to a map of the infrared light emitted by heated-up hydrogen molecules in Messier 106.

The warmed hydrogen is a signature of the jet from the central black hole energizing the surrounding disk of the galaxy.