Skip to main content

Monster black hole gives off epic radio emissions as it chows down on gas

Black holes are counter-intuitive things. They have such strong gravity that they absorb everything that comes close to them, even light, but they can still glow brightly in certain wavelengths due to emissions being given off at their event horizons. Astronomers have captured incredible emissions from a monster black hole with a mass equivalent to 55 million suns, which is giving off radio eruptions large enough to cover a portion of the sky the length of 16 moons.

The radio emissions are coming from the supermassive black hole at the heart of the galaxy Centaurus A, located 12 million light-years away, which is gobbling down gas. As the black hole consumes this gas it ejects material at extremely high speeds which gives rise to “radio bubbles” that grow and reach out into space.

Centaurus A is a giant elliptical active galaxy 12 million light-years away.
Centaurus A is a giant elliptical active galaxy 12 million light-years away. At its heart lies a black hole with a mass of 55 million suns. This image shows the galaxy at radio wavelengths, revealing vast lobes of plasma that reach far beyond the visible galaxy, which occupies only a small patch at the center of the image. Ben McKinley, ICRAR/Curtin and Connor Matherne, Louisiana State University

“These radio waves come from material being sucked into the supermassive black hole in the middle of the galaxy,” lead author Dr. Benjamin McKinley of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) explained in a statement. “It forms a disc around the black hole, and as the matter gets ripped apart going close to the black hole, powerful jets form on either side of the disc, ejecting most of the material back out into space, to distances of probably more than a million light-years.

Recommended Videos

“Previous radio observations could not handle the extreme brightness of the jets and details of the larger area surrounding the galaxy were distorted, but our new image overcomes these limitations.”

Centaurus A is a giant elliptical active galaxy 12 million light-years away.
This composite image shows the Centaurus A galaxy and the surrounding intergalactic space at several different wavelengths. The radio plasma is displayed in blue and appears to be interacting with hot X-ray emitting gas (orange) and cold neutral hydrogen (purple). Clouds emitting Halpha (red) are also shown above the main optical part of the galaxy which lies in between the two brightest radio blobs. Connor Matherne, Louisiana State University (Optical/Halpha), Kraft et al. (X-ray), Struve et al. (HI), Ben McKinley, ICRAR/Curtin. (Radio)

One reason to study Centaurus A is that it is the closest radio galaxy to our Milky Way, making it an ideal target for research. “We can learn a lot from Centaurus A in particular, just because it is so close and we can see it in such detail,” Dr. McKinley said. “Not just at radio wavelengths, but at all other wavelengths of light as well. In this research we’ve been able to combine the radio observations with optical and x-ray data, to help us better understand the physics of these supermassive black holes.”

The research is published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Georgina Torbet
Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…
Biggest stellar black hole to date discovered in our galaxy
Astronomers have found the most massive stellar black hole in our galaxy, thanks to the wobbling motion it induces on a companion star. This artist’s impression shows the orbits of both the star and the black hole, dubbed Gaia BH3, around their common centre of mass. This wobbling was measured over several years with the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission. Additional data from other telescopes, including ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile, confirmed that the mass of this black hole is 33 times that of our Sun. The chemical composition of the companion star suggests that the black hole was formed after the collapse of a massive star with very few heavy elements, or metals, as predicted by theory.

Black holes generally come in two sizes: big and really big. As they are so dense, they are measured in terms of mass rather than size, and astronomers call these two groups of stellar mass black holes (as in, equivalent to the mass of the sun) and supermassive black holes. Why there are hardly any intermediate-mass black holes is an ongoing question in astronomy research, and the most massive stellar mass black holes known in our galaxy tend to be up to 20 times the mass of the sun. Recently, though, astronomers have discovered a much larger stellar mass black hole that weighs 33 times the mass of the sun.

Not only is this new discovery the most massive stellar black hole discovered in our galaxy to date but it is also surprisingly close to us. Located just 2,000 light-years away, it is one of the closest known black holes to Earth.

Read more
Stunning image shows the magnetic fields of our galaxy’s supermassive black hole
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, who produced the first ever image of our Milky Way black hole released in 2022, has captured a new view of the massive object at the center of our Galaxy: how it looks in polarized light. This is the first time astronomers have been able to measure polarization, a signature of magnetic fields, this close to the edge of Sagittarius A*. This image shows the polarized view of the Milky Way black hole. The lines mark the orientation of polarization, which is related to the magnetic field around the shadow of the black hole.

The Event Horizon Telescope collaboration, the group that took the historic first-ever image of a black hole, is back with a new stunning black hole image. This one shows the magnetic fields twirling around the supermassive black hole at the heart of our galaxy, Sagittarius A*.

Black holes are hard to image because they swallow anything that comes close to them, even light, due to their immensely powerful gravity. However, that doesn't mean they are invisible. The black hole itself can't be seen, but the swirling matter around the event horizon's edges glows brightly enough to be imaged. This new image takes advantage of a feature of light called polarization, revealing the powerful magnetic fields that twirl around the enormous black hole.

Read more
Nightmare black hole is the brightest object in the universe
Artist’s impression showing the record-breaking quasar J059-4351.

A  recently discovered monster black hole feasts on so much nearby material that it's the fastest-growing of its kind on record. The beefy black hole is devouring the equivalent mass of our sun every single day, making it a record-breaker in more ways than one.

“The incredible rate of growth also means a huge release of light and heat,” said lead researcher Christian Wolf of The Australian National University in a statement. “So, this is also the most luminous known object in the universe. It’s 500 trillion times brighter than our sun.”

Read more