Supermassive Black Hole
This artist’s
impression depicts a rapidly spinning supermassive black hole surrounded by an
accretion disc. This thin disc of rotating material consists of the leftovers
of a Sun-like star which was ripped apart by the tidal forces of the black
hole. Shocks in the colliding debris as well as heat generated in accretion led
to a burst of light, resembling a supernova explosion.
Credit:
ESO, ESA/Hubble, M.
Kornmesser
Cold Intergalactic Rain
The cosmic weather report, as
illustrated in this artist’s concept, calls for condensing clouds of cold
molecular gas around the Abell 2597 Brightest Cluster Galaxy. The clouds
condense out of the hot, ionised gas that suffuses the space between the
galaxies in this cluster. New ALMA data show that these clouds are raining in
on the galaxy, plunging toward the supermassive black hole at its centre.
Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF; Dana Berry/SkyWorks; ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)
The Quasar 3C 279
This is an artist’s
impression of the quasar 3C 279. Astronomers connected the Atacama Pathfinder
Experiment (APEX), in Chile, to the Submillimeter Array (SMA) in Hawaii, USA,
and the Submillimeter Telescope (SMT) in Arizona, USA for the first time, to
make the sharpest observations ever, of the centre of a distant galaxy, the
bright quasar 3C 279. Quasars are the very bright centres of distant galaxies
that are powered by supermassive black holes. This quasar contains a black hole
with a mass about one billion times that of the Sun, and is so far from Earth
that its light has taken more than 5 billion years to reach us. The team were
able to probe scales of less than a light-year across the quasar — a remarkable
achievement for a target that is billions of light-years away.
Credit:
ESO/M. Kornmesser
An Active Galactic Nucleus
Artist's impression of
an active galaxy that has jets. The central engine is thought to be a
supermassive black hole surrounded by an accretion disc and enshrouded in a
dusty doughnut-shaped torus. The torus of dust and gas can be seen orbiting a
flatter disc of swirling gas. In the centre, the supermassive black hole is
surrounded by a flat accretion disc of rapidly orbiting material. The jets are
emitted at right angles from the plane of the disc. Courtesy Aurore Simonnet,
Sonoma State University.
Credit: ESO
The Horsehead Nebula
A reproduction of a
composite colour image of the Horsehead Nebula and its immediate surroundings.
It is based on three exposures in the visual part of the spectrum with the
FORS2 multi-mode instrument at the 8.2-m KUEYEN telescope at Paranal. It was
produced from three images, obtained on February 1, 2000, with the FORS2
multi-mode instrument at the 8.2-m KUEYEN Unit Telescope and extracted from the
VLT Science Archive Facility . The frames were obtained in the B-band (600 sec exposure;
wavelength 429 nm; FWHM 88 nm; here rendered as blue), V-band (300 sec; 554 nm;
112 nm; green) and R-band (120 sec; 655 nm; 165 nm; red). The original pixel
size is 0.2 arcsec. The photo shows the full field recorded in all three
colours, approximately 6.5 x 6.7 arcmin 2 . The seeing was about 0.75 arcsec.
This image is
available as a mounted image in the ESOshop.
Credit:
ESO
