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Hubble Space Telescope Home NASA’s Hubble Finds that… Missions Hubble Home Overview About Hubble The History of Hubble Hubble Timeline Why Have a Telescope in Space? Hubble by the Numbers At the Museum FAQs Impact & Benefits Hubble’s Impact & Benefits Science Impacts Cultural Impact Technology Benefits Impact on Human Spaceflight Astro Community Impacts Science Hubble Science Science Themes Science Highlights Science Behind Discoveries Hubble’s Partners in Science Universe Uncovered Explore the Night Sky Observatory Hubble Observatory Hubble Design Mission Operations Missions to Hubble Hubble vs Webb Team Hubble Team Career Aspirations Hubble Astronauts News Hubble News Hubble News Archive Social Media Media Resources Multimedia Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts E-books Lithographs Fact Sheets Glossary Posters Hubble on the NASA App More Online Activities 6 min read
NASA’s Hubble Finds that a Black Hole Beam Promotes Stellar Eruptions
This is an artist’s concept looking down into the core of the giant elliptical galaxy M87. A supermassive black hole ejects a 3,000-light-year-long jet of plasma, traveling at nearly the speed of light. In the foreground, to the right is a binary star system. The system is far from the black hole, but in the vicinity of the jet. In the system an aging, swelled-up, normal star spills hydrogen onto a burned-out white dwarf companion star. As the hydrogen accumulates on the surface of the dwarf, it reaches a tipping point where it explodes like a hydrogen bomb. Novae frequently pop-off throughout the giant galaxy of 1 trillion stars, but those near the jet seem to explode more frequently. So far, it’s anybody’s guess why black hole jets enhance the rate of nova eruptions. NASA, ESA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)
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In a surprise finding, astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have discovered that the blowtorch-like jet from a supermassive black hole at the core of a huge galaxy seems to cause stars to erupt along its trajectory. The stars, called novae, are not caught inside the jet, but apparently in a dangerous neighborhood nearby.
The finding is confounding researchers searching for an explanation. “We don’t know what’s going on, but it’s just a very exciting finding,” said lead author Alec Lessing of Stanford University. “This means there’s something missing from our understanding of how black hole jets interact with their surroundings.”
A nova erupts in a double-star system where an aging, swelled-up, normal star spills hydrogen onto a burned-out white dwarf companion star. When the dwarf has tanked up a mile-deep surface layer of hydrogen that layer explodes like a giant nuclear bomb. The white dwarf isn’t destroyed by the nova eruption, which ejects its surface layer and then goes back to siphoning fuel from its companion, and the nova-outburst cycle starts over again.
Hubble found twice as many novae going off near the jet as elsewhere in the giant galaxy during the surveyed time period. The jet is launched by a 6.5-billion-solar-mass central black hole surrounded by a disk of swirling matter. The black hole, engorged with infalling matter, launches a 3,000-light-year-long jet of plasma blazing through space at nearly the speed of light. Anything caught in the energetic beam would be sizzled. But being near its blistering outflow is apparently also risky, according to the new Hubble findings.
A Hubble Space Telescope image of the giant galaxy M87 shows a 3,000-light-year-long jet of plasma blasting from the galaxy’s 6.5-billion-solar-mass central black hole. The blowtorch-like jet seems to cause stars to erupt along its trajectory. These novae are not caught inside the jet, but are apparently in a dangerous neighborhood nearby. During a recent 9-month survey, astronomers using Hubble found twice as many of these novae going off near the jet as elsewhere in the galaxy. The galaxy is the home of several trillion stars and thousands of star-like globular star clusters. NASA, ESA, STScI, Alec Lessing (Stanford University), Mike Shara (AMNH); Acknowledgment: Edward Baltz (Stanford University); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
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The finding of twice as many novae near the jet implies that there are twice as many nova-forming double-star systems near the jet or that these systems erupt twice as often as similar systems elsewhere in the galaxy.
“There’s something that the jet is doing to the star systems that wander into the surrounding neighborhood. Maybe the jet somehow snowplows hydrogen fuel onto the white dwarfs, causing them to erupt more frequently,” said Lessing. “But it’s not clear that it’s a physical pushing. It could be the effect of the pressure of the light emanating from the jet. When you deliver hydrogen faster, you get eruptions faster. Something might be doubling the mass transfer rate onto the white dwarfs near the jet.” Another idea the researchers considered is that the jet is heating the dwarf’s companion star, causing it to overflow further and dump more hydrogen onto the dwarf. However, the researchers calculated that this heating is not nearly large enough to have this effect.
“We’re not the first people who’ve said that it looks like there’s more activity going on around the M87 jet,” said co-investigator Michael Shara of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. “But Hubble has shown this enhanced activity with far more examples and statistical significance than we ever had before.”
Shortly after Hubble’s launch in 1990, astronomers used its first-generation Faint Object Camera (FOC) to peer into the center of M87 where the monster black hole lurks. They noted that unusual things were happening around the black hole. Almost every time Hubble looked, astronomers saw bluish “transient events” that could be evidence for novae popping off like camera flashes from nearby paparazzi. But the FOC’s view was so narrow that Hubble astronomers couldn’t look away from the jet to compare with the near-jet region. For over two decades, the results remained mysteriously tantalizing.
Compelling evidence for the jet’s influence on the stars of the host galaxy was collected over a nine-month interval of Hubble observing with newer, wider-view cameras to count the erupting novae. This was a challenge for the telescope’s observing schedule because it required revisiting M87 precisely every five days for another snapshot. Adding up all of the M87 images led to the deepest images of M87 that have ever been taken.
In a surprise finding, astronomers, using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have discovered that the jet from a supermassive black hole at the core of M87, a huge galaxy 54 million light years away, seems to cause stars to erupt along its trajectory.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center; Lead Producer: Paul Morris Hubble found 94 novae in the one-third of M87 that its camera can encompass. “The jet was not the only thing that we were looking at — we were looking at the entire inner galaxy. Once you plotted all known novae on top of M87 you didn’t need statistics to convince yourself that there is an excess of novae along the jet. This is not rocket science. We made the discovery simply by looking at the images. And while we were really surprised, our statistical analyses of the data confirmed what we clearly saw,” said Shara.
This accomplishment is entirely due to Hubble’s unique capabilities. Ground-based telescope images do not have the clarity to see novae deep inside M87. They cannot resolve stars or stellar eruptions close to the galaxy’s core because the black hole’s surroundings are far too bright. Only Hubble can detect novae against the bright M87 background.
Novae are remarkably common in the universe. One nova erupts somewhere in M87 every day. But since there are at least 100 billion galaxies throughout the visible universe, around 1 million novae erupt every second somewhere out there.
The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, Colorado, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.
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Hubble’s Messier Catalog: M87
Hubble Black Holes
Monster Black Holes are Everywhere
Facebook logo @NASAHubble @NASAHubble Instagram logo @NASAHubble Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD
Science Contact:
Alec Lessing
Stanford University, Stanford, CA
Michael Shara
American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY
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Last Updated Sep 26, 2024 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Astrophysics Astrophysics Division Black Holes Goddard Space Flight Center Hubble Space Telescope Missions Stars The Universe Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From Hubble
Hubble Space Telescope
Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
Hubble E-books
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By European Space Agency
Image: On 20 September, the Copernicus Sentinel-2C satellite captured its first stunning image of the Moon, achieved by rolling the satellite sideways in a unique manoeuvre. Although Sentinel-2C is primarily designed for Earth observation, this image – intended for calibration and cross-mission comparisons – exceeded expectations. View the full article
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By NASA
Hubble Space Telescope Home Hubble Lights the Way with New… Hubble Space Telescope Hubble Home Overview About Hubble The History of Hubble Hubble Timeline Why Have a Telescope in Space? Hubble by the Numbers At the Museum FAQs Impact & Benefits Hubble’s Impact & Benefits Science Impacts Cultural Impact Technology Benefits Impact on Human Spaceflight Astro Community Impacts Science Hubble Science Science Themes Science Highlights Science Behind Discoveries Hubble’s Partners in Science Universe Uncovered Explore the Night Sky Observatory Hubble Observatory Hubble Design Mission Operations Missions to Hubble Hubble vs Webb Team Hubble Team Career Aspirations Hubble Astronauts News Hubble News Hubble News Archive Social Media Media Resources Multimedia Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts E-books Lithographs Fact Sheets Glossary Posters Hubble on the NASA App More Online Activities 2 min read
Hubble Lights the Way with New Multiwavelength Galaxy View
This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features the galaxy NGC 1559. ESA/Hubble & NASA, F. Belfiore, W. Yuan, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team, A. Riess, K. Takáts, D. de Martin & M. Zamani (ESA/Hubble) The magnificent galaxy featured in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is NGC 1559. It is a barred spiral galaxy located in the constellation Reticulum, approximately 35 million light-years from Earth. The brilliant light captured in the current image offers a wealth of information.
This picture is composed of a whopping ten different Hubble images, each filtered to collect light from a specific wavelength or range of wavelengths. It spans Hubble’s sensitivity to light, from ultraviolet through visible light and into the near-infrared spectrum. Capturing such a wide range of wavelengths allows astronomers to study information about many different astrophysical processes in the galaxy: one notable example is the red 656-nanometer filter used here. Ionized hydrogen atoms emit light at this particular wavelength, called H-alpha emission. New stars forming in a molecular cloud, made mostly of hydrogen gas, emit copious amounts of ultraviolet light that the cloud absorbs, ionizing the hydrogen gas causing it to glow with H-alpha light. Using Hubble’s filters to detect only H-alpha light provides a reliable way to detect areas of star formation (called H II regions). These regions are visible in this image as bright red and pink patches filling NGC 1559’s spiral arms.
These ten images come from six different Hubble observing programs, spanning from 2009 all the way up to 2024. Teams of astronomers from around the world proposed these programs with a variety of scientific goals, ranging from studying ionized gas and star formation, to following up on a supernova, to tracking variable stars as a contribution to calculating the Hubble constant. The data from all of these observations lives in the Hubble archive, available for anyone to use. This archive is regularly used to generate new science, but also to create spectacular images like this one! This new image of NGC 1559 is a reminder of the incredible opportunities that Hubble provided and continues to provide.
Along with Hubble’s observations, astronomers are using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to continue researching this galaxy. This Webb image from February showcases the galaxy in near- and mid-infrared light.
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Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Sep 19, 2024 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Astrophysics Astrophysics Division Galaxies Goddard Space Flight Center Hubble Space Telescope Spiral Galaxies The Universe Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From Hubble
Hubble Space Telescope
Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
Science Behind the Discoveries
Hubble’s Galaxies
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By NASA
ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Koss, A, Barth This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the spiral galaxy IC 4709 located around 240 million light-years away in the southern constellation Telescopium. Hubble beautifully captures its faint halo and swirling disk filled with stars and dust bands. The compact region at its core might be the most remarkable sight. It holds an active galactic nucleus (AGN).
If IC 4709’s core just held stars, it wouldn’t be nearly as bright. Instead, it hosts a gargantuan black hole, 65 million times more massive than our Sun. A disk of gas spirals around and eventually into this black hole, crashing together and heating up as it spins. It reaches such high temperatures that it emits vast quantities of electromagnetic radiation, from infrared to visible to ultraviolet light and X-rays. A lane of dark dust, just visible at the center of the galaxy in the image above, obscures the AGN in IC 4709. The dust lane blocks any visible light emission from the nucleus itself. Hubble’s spectacular resolution, however, gives astronomers a detailed view of the interaction between the quite small AGN and its host galaxy. This is essential to understanding supermassive black holes in galaxies much more distant than IC 4709, where resolving such fine details is not possible.
This image incorporates data from two Hubble surveys of nearby AGNs originally identified by NASA’s Swift telescope. There are plans for Swift to collect new data on these galaxies. Swift houses three multiwavelength telescopes, collecting data in visible, ultraviolet, X-ray, and gamma-ray light. Its X-ray component will allow SWIFT to directly see the X-rays from IC 4709’s AGN breaking through the obscuring dust. ESA’s Euclid telescope — currently surveying the dark universe in optical and infrared light — will also image IC 4709 and other local AGNs. Their data, along with Hubble’s, provides astronomers with complementary views across the electromagnetic spectrum. Such views are key to fully research and better understand black holes and their influence on their host galaxies.
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By NASA
Hubble Space Telescope Home NASA’s Hubble Finds More… Missions Hubble Home Overview About Hubble The History of Hubble Hubble Timeline Why Have a Telescope in Space? Hubble by the Numbers At the Museum FAQs Impact & Benefits Hubble’s Impact & Benefits Science Impacts Cultural Impact Technology Benefits Impact on Human Spaceflight Astro Community Impacts Science Hubble Science Science Themes Science Highlights Science Behind Discoveries Hubble’s Partners in Science Universe Uncovered Explore the Night Sky Observatory Hubble Observatory Hubble Design Mission Operations Missions to Hubble Hubble vs Webb Team Hubble Team Career Aspirations Hubble Astronauts News Hubble News Hubble News Archive Social Media Media Resources Multimedia Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts E-books Lithographs Fact Sheets Glossary Posters Hubble on the NASA App More Online Activities 4 Min Read NASA’s Hubble Finds More Black Holes than Expected in the Early Universe
The Hubble Ultra Deep Field of nearly 10,000 galaxies is the deepest visible-light image of the cosmos. The image required 800 exposures taken over 400 Hubble orbits around Earth. The total amount of exposure time was 11.3 days, taken between Sept. 24, 2003 and Jan. 16, 2004. Credits:
NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI) and the HUDF Team With the help of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, an international team of researchers led by scientists in the Department of Astronomy at Stockholm University has found more black holes in the early universe than has previously been reported. The new result can help scientists understand how supermassive black holes were created.
Currently, scientists do not have a complete picture of how the first black holes formed not long after the big bang. It is known that supermassive black holes, that can weigh more than a billion suns, exist at the center of several galaxies less than a billion years after the big bang.
“Many of these objects seem to be more massive than we originally thought they could be at such early times — either they formed very massive or they grew extremely quickly,” said Alice Young, a PhD student from Stockholm University and co-author of the study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
This is a new image of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. The first deep imaging of the field was done with Hubble in 2004. The same survey field was observed again by Hubble several years later, and was then reimaged in 2023. By comparing Hubble Wide Field Camera 3 near-infrared exposures taken in 2009, 2012, and 2023, astronomers found evidence for flickering supermassive black holes in the hearts of early galaxies. One example is seen as a bright object in the inset. Some supermassive black holes do not swallow surrounding material constantly, but in fits and bursts, making their brightness flicker. This can be detected by comparing Hubble Ultra Deep Field frames taken at different epochs. The survey found more black holes than predicted. NASA, ESA, Matthew Hayes (Stockholm University); Acknowledgment: Steven V.W. Beckwith (UC Berkeley), Garth Illingworth (UC Santa Cruz), Richard Ellis (UCL); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
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Black holes play an important role in the lifecycle of all galaxies, but there are major uncertainties in our understanding of how galaxies evolve. In order to gain a complete picture of the link between galaxy and black hole evolution, the researchers used Hubble to survey how many black holes exist among a population of faint galaxies when the universe was just a few percent of its current age.
Initial observations of the survey region were re-photographed by Hubble after several years. This allowed the team to measure variations in the brightness of galaxies. These variations are a telltale sign of black holes. The team identified more black holes than previously found by other methods.
The new observational results suggest that some black holes likely formed by the collapse of massive, pristine stars during the first billion years of cosmic time. These types of stars can only exist at very early times in the universe, because later-generation stars are polluted by the remnants of stars that have already lived and died. Other alternatives for black hole formation include collapsing gas clouds, mergers of stars in massive clusters, and “primordial” black holes that formed (by physically speculative mechanisms) in the first few seconds after the big bang. With this new information about black hole formation, more accurate models of galaxy formation can be constructed.
“The formation mechanism of early black holes is an important part of the puzzle of galaxy evolution,” said Matthew Hayes from the Department of Astronomy at Stockholm University and lead author of the study. “Together with models for how black holes grow, galaxy evolution calculations can now be placed on a more physically motivated footing, with an accurate scheme for how black holes came into existence from collapsing massive stars.”
Image Before/After Astronomers are also making observations with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to search for galactic black holes that formed soon after the big bang, to understand how massive they were and where they were located.
The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, Colorado, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.
Facebook logo @NASAHubble @NASAHubble Instagram logo @NASAHubble Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD
Science Contact:
Matthew Hayes
Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
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Last Updated Sep 17, 2024 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Astrophysics Astrophysics Division Black Holes Goddard Space Flight Center Hubble Space Telescope Missions The Universe Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From Hubble
Hubble Space Telescope
Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
Hubble Science Highlights
Hubble Online Activities
Hubble Focus: Dark Universe
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