[Whilst this blog post has nothing to do with Disney’s The Black Hole, how can you mention black holes without either having Maximillian (Maximillian!!!) or Reinhardt?]
This image of a ring of black holes has been around on the web for a few days now, but if you haven’t seen it already I think you’ll be impressed by it.
The image was made by compositing X-Ray images form the Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble – you can learn more about Chandra by clicking HERE
This is the run-down from Sify:
The composite image of Arp 147, a pair of interacting galaxies located about 430 million light-years from Earth, shows X-rays from the NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (pink) and optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope (red, green, blue) produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Md.
Arp 147 contains the remnant of a spiral galaxy (right) that collided with the elliptical galaxy on the left.
This collision has produced an expanding wave of star formation that shows up as a blue ring containing in abundance of massive young stars.
The nine X-ray sources scattered around the ring in Arp 147 are so bright that they must be black holes, with masses that are likely ten to twenty times that of the Sun.
An X-ray source is also detected in the nucleus of the red galaxy on the left and may be powered by a poorly-fed supermassive black hole. This source is not obvious in the composite image but can easily be seen in the X-ray image.
Other objects unrelated to Arp 147 are also visible: a foreground star in the lower left of the image and a background quasar as the pink source above and to the left of the red galaxy.
Infrared observations with NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and ultraviolet observations with NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) have allowed estimates of the rate of star formation in the ring.
These estimates, combined with the use of models for the evolution of binary stars have allowed the authors to conclude that the most intense star formation may have ended some 15 million years ago, in Earth’s time frame.
You can read the full article at Sify HERE and by visiting NASA themselves HERE
It’s nice to actually see some visual evidence of black holes (the pink blobs around the galaxy on the right) and it’s also nice to see that Hubble is still contributing to major astrological discoveries, even as it nears the end of its tenure as the great eye in the sky…
Tony Healey 