Images by Date
Images by Category
Solar System
Stars
Exoplanets
White Dwarfs
Supernovas
Neutron Stars
Black Holes
Milky Way Galaxy
Normal Galaxies
Quasars
Galaxy Clusters
Cosmology/Deep Field
Miscellaneous
Images by Interest
Space Scoop for Kids
4K JPG
Multiwavelength
Sky Map
Constellations
Photo Blog
Top Rated Images
Image Handouts
Desktops
Fits Files
Visual descriptions
Image Tutorials
Photo Album Tutorial
False Color
Cosmic Distance
Look-Back Time
Scale & Distance
Angular Measurement
Images & Processing
AVM/Metadata
Image Use Policy
Web Shortcuts
Chandra Blog
RSS Feed
Chronicle
Email Newsletter
News & Noteworthy
Image Use Policy
Questions & Answers
Glossary of Terms
Download Guide
Get Adobe Reader
Animations: "Mini" Monster Black Hole Could Hold Clues to Giant's Growth
Tour: Mrk 462
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A. Hobart)
[Runtime: 02:48]

With closed-captions (at YouTube)

The discovery of a supermassive black hole in a relatively small galaxy could help astronomers unravel the mystery surrounding how the very biggest black holes grow.

Researchers used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to identify a black hole containing about 200,000 times the mass of the Sun buried in gas and dust in the galaxy named Markarian 462.

Markarian 462 contains only several hundred million stars, making it a dwarf galaxy. By contrast, our Milky Way is home to a few hundred billion stars. This is one of the first times that a heavily buried, or "obscured," supermassive black hole has been found in a dwarf galaxy.

In larger galaxies astronomers often find black holes by looking for the rapid motions of stars in the centers of galaxies. However, dwarf galaxies are too small and dim for most current instruments to detect this. Another technique is to search for the signatures of growing black holes, such as gas being heated up to millions of degrees and glowing in X-rays as it falls towards a black hole.

The researchers in this study used Chandra to look at eight dwarf galaxies that had previously shown hints of black hole growth from optical data gathered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Of those eight, only Markarian 462 showed the X-ray signature of a growing black hole.

Astronomers are trying to figure out the fraction of smaller galaxies that contain supermassive black holes because that could help determine an important piece of black hole history. A large fraction of dwarf galaxies with supermassive black holes favors the idea that small black hole seeds from the earliest generation of stars grew astonishingly quickly to form the billion solar mass objects in the early universe. A smaller fraction would tip the scales to favor the idea that black holes began life weighing tens of thousands of Suns.

While scientists can't make strong conclusions from one example, they hope this result will encourage more extensive searches for buried black holes in dwarf galaxies.


Quick Look: Mrk 462
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A. Hobart)
[Runtime: 00:45]

A "mini" supermassive black hole has been discovered in a dwarf galaxy.

Dwarf galaxies are much smaller and contain far fewer stars than the Milky Way.

This discovery could help determine how some of the earliest black holes formed.

Astronomers used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory for this discovery.





Return to: "Mini" Monster Black Hole Could Hold Clues to Giant's Growth (January 10, 2022)