Skip to main content

Unique black hole is trailed by 200,000 light-year-long tail of stars

Black holes might have a reputation as terrifying monsters, devouring all they come into contact with — but they can be a force of creation too, feeding the formation of new stars. Researchers using data from the Hubble Space Telescope recently spotted an unexpectedly huge trail of stars forming in the wake of a rogue black hole.

While most very large black holes, called supermassive black holes, sit at the center of galaxies, occasionally these enormous beasts can be found wandering alone in the depths of space. That’s the case with the recently discovered black hole with the mass of 20 million suns, which is streaking through the sky at tremendous speed. This likely began with two galaxies merging, each with its own supermassive black hole, which formed a binary system. Then a third galaxy got too close, and in the chaos of a three-way merger one of the black holes was kicked out and sent zipping off into space — so fast that if it were in our solar system, it would travel from the Earth to the moon in 14 minutes.

This is an artist's impression of a runaway supermassive black hole that was ejected from its host galaxy as a result of a tussle between it and two other black holes.
This is an artist’s impression of a runaway supermassive black hole that was ejected from its host galaxy as a result of a tussle between it and two other black holes. As the black hole plows through intergalactic space it compresses tenuous gas in front of it. This precipitates the birth of hot blue stars. This illustration is based on Hubble Space Telescope observations of a 200,000-light-year-long contrail of stars behind an escaping black hole. ARTWORK: NASA, ESA, Leah Hustak (STScI)

The lonely black hole has been traveling space ever since, and it is now followed by a tail of stars an astonishing 200,000 light-years long. That’s twice as long as the Milky Way is wide. The effect seems to have occurred because the black hole is ramming into clouds of gas and leaving a trail of warm gas in its wake, creating a cozy environment for stars to form.

Recommended Videos

“We think we’re seeing a wake behind the black hole where the gas cools and is able to form stars. So, we’re looking at star formation trailing the black hole,” explained lead author Pieter van Dokkum of Yale University in a statement. “What we’re seeing is the aftermath. Like the wake behind a ship, we’re seeing the wake behind the black hole.”

This is the first time such a phenomenon has been observed, and it was spotted by chance when the researchers were poring over Hubble images and investigating what looked like scratches.

“This is pure serendipity that we stumbled across it,” van Dokkum said. “I was just scanning through the Hubble image and then I noticed that we have a little streak. I immediately thought, ‘Oh, a cosmic ray hitting the camera detector and causing a linear imaging artifact.’ When we eliminated cosmic rays we realized it was still there. It didn’t look like anything we’ve seen before.”

The research is published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Georgina Torbet
Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…
Event Horizon Telescope can now take images of black holes that are 50% sharper
Illustration of the highest-resolution detections ever made from the surface of Earth

The Event Horizon Telescope project, the group that took the first-ever image of a black hole, has made another historic breakthrough, making the highest-ever resolution observations of space taken from the Earth's surface. The project uses facilities around the globe to turn the Earth itself into a giant observatory, which is capable of taking highly precise measurements of distant galaxies.

The latest observations made use of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a large array of radio telescopes located in Chile, as well as other facilities in Spain, France, and Hawaii. To get higher-resolution images than previous observations, scientists weren't able to make the telescope bigger -- as it was already the size of the Earth -- so they observed at a higher frequency instead.

Read more
Hubble finds mysterious and elusive black hole
An international team of astronomers has used more than 500 images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope spanning two decades to detect seven fast-moving stars in the innermost region of Omega Centauri, the largest and brightest globular cluster in the sky. These stars provide compelling new evidence for the presence of an intermediate-mass black hole.

An international team of astronomers has used more than 500 images from the NASA/European Space Agency (ESA) Hubble Space Telescope spanning two decades to detect seven fast-moving stars in the innermost region of Omega Centauri, the largest and brightest globular cluster in the sky. These stars provide compelling new evidence of the presence of an intermediate-mass black hole. ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Häberle (MPIA)

There's something strange about black holes. Astronomers often find small black holes, which are between five times and 100 times the mass of the sun. And they often find huge supermassive black holes, which are hundreds of thousands of times the mass of the sun or even larger. But they almost never find black holes in between those two sizes.

Read more
NASA 360-degree video shows what it’s like to plunge into a black hole
A black hole according to NASA's 360-degree video.

360 Video: NASA Simulation Shows a Flight Around a Black Hole

If you were having a bad day, plunging into a black hole would be enough to really top it off. Apparently, you’d experience a process known as “spaghettification” in which the black hole’s enormous gravitational force would compress your entire body while stretching it out at the same time, leaving you a bit noodle-like. Falling into a supermassive black hole would be a slightly less horrendous experience, apparently.

Read more