Universe  ID: 10549

Swift Survey Finds 'Smoking Gun' of Black Hole Activation

Released on May 26, 2010
Astronomers using X-ray data from an ongoing survey by NASA's Swift satellite have solved a decades-long mystery. Why, when most galaxies host giant black holes in their centers, do only about one percent of them emit vast amounts of energy?

The new findings confirm that the black holes "light up" when galaxies collide — and may offer insight into the future behavior of the black hole in our own galaxy.

The intense emission from galaxy centers, or nuclei, arises near a supermassive black hole containing between a million and a billion times the sun's mass. Giving off as much as 10 billion times the sun's energy, some of these active galactic nuclei (AGN) — a class that includes quasars and blazars — are the most luminous objects in the universe.

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This simulation follows the collision of two spiral galaxies that harbor giant black holes. The collision merges the black holes and stirs up gas in both galaxies. The merged black hole gorges on the feast and lights up, forming an active galactic nucleus called a quasar and creating a "wind" that blows away much of the galaxy's gas.

See the original animation at:

http://web.phys.cmu.edu/~tiziana/BHGrow/.

Credit:Volker Springel and Tiziana Di Matteo (Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics), Lars Hernquist (Harvard Univ.)

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These images show the optical counterparts of several AGN detected by the Swift BAT Hard X-ray Survey. The galaxy shapes are either physically intertwined or distorted by the gravity of nearby neighbors. The active black holes (circled) were known prior to the Swift survey, but Swift has found dozens of new AGN in more distant galaxies.

Credit: NASA/Swift/NOAO/Michael Koss and Richard Mushotzky (Univ. of Maryland)

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Merging galaxies image without annotation.

Credit: NASA/Swift/NOAO/Michael Koss and Richard Mushotzky (Univ. of Maryland)

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Credits

Scott Wiessinger (UMBC): Video Editor
Scott Wiessinger (UMBC): Producer
Michael Koss (University of Maryland): Scientist
Richard Mushotzky (University of Maryland): Scientist
Francis Reddy (University of Maryland College Park): Lead Science Writer
Francis Reddy (University of Maryland College Park): Graphics
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Mission:
Swift

Data Used:
Swift
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This item is part of this series:
Astrophysics Simulations

Goddard TV Tape:
G2010-139 -- Various Small Astrophysics projects

Keywords:
SVS >> Galaxy
SVS >> HDTV
DLESE >> Space science
SVS >> Black Hole
SVS >> Active Galaxy
SVS >> Astrophysics
SVS >> Universe
SVS >> Space
SVS >> Swift
SVS >> Active Galactic Nucleus
NASA Science >> Universe