This Gorgeous Cosmic 'Butterfly' Is Actually A Black Hole

The research also corroborates a unique theory called Chaotic Cold Accretion that involves cold gas precipitation and its effect on the entire galaxy.

Astronomers have spotted yet another fascinating space phenomenon, and this one was detected in a neighboring supermassive black hole whose visible radio eruption in the sky is as wide as 16 of Earth's Moon laid side by side. When a black hole feasts, the process of consuming matter around it is quite intense and doesn’t even allow light to escape its gravitational pull. But in the process, it also ejects beams of high-energy particles that travel at near light speed.

The whole process is somewhat like a burp but on a cosmic scale. Recent research that was published in Nature tried to find out why black holes shoot jets of plasma at such high speed. And thanks to advanced 3D modeling techniques, the team theorized that the black hole’s rotation and the strong magnetic field in its vicinity is what accelerates these particles. It’s quite a light show, and scientists just happen to have spotted a big one in action.

Experts at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research have managed to create an image of the erupting supermassive black hole in the Centaurus A galaxy. The stunning image, which was created via radio observations, actually looks like a beautiful butterfly with fiery shades of purple and orange on its wings. Thanks to the galaxy’s proximity and the size of the black hole, the latter's belching posture extends 8-degrees on the horizon, which is about the same width as 16 moons appearing in the sky laid side by side. Earlier this month, NASA also shared a stunning image of an exploding galaxy called NGC 3568 that lies in the Centaurus constellation.

Another Black Hole Mystery Unraveled

The supermassive black hole captured in the image has a mass equivalent to 55 million suns, while the Centaurus A galaxy is about 12 million light-years away. The lobes depicted in the image are actually clouds of plasma ejected by the black hole and were captured in the radio spectrum with help from the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescope in Australia. Radio observations are of great help in astronomy since cosmic dust often blocks optical observation instruments. Earlier this month, the ALMA radio telescope helped scientists detect water in the most massive galaxy from the early universe.

The latest research from ICRAR, which has been published in Nature Astronomy, is said to help scientists better understand the workings of a supermassive black hole, thanks to the proximity factor and also because Centaurus is visible in other regions of the electromagnetic spectrum as well. “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,” research lead Dr. Benjamin McKinley said. The second cool aspect of the discovery is that it confirms another unique theory called Chaotic Cold Accretion (CCA). It postulates that clouds composed of cold gas — the fuel for galaxies — condense in a galaxy’s halo region and then precipitate in the center to feed the black hole. This rain of cold gas is what causes the supermassive black hole in Centaurus A to shoot jets that appear as massive lobes in the images above.