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Black Hole Jet Stumbles Into Something in the Dark
- Astronomers have discovered an unusual mark from a giant black hole's powerful jet striking an unidentified object in its path in a galaxy called Centaurus A.
- Using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, the jet is found to be moving at close to the speed of light in certain spots.
- They also found a patch of V-shaped emission connected to a bright source of X-rays, something that had not been seen before in this galaxy and called C4.
- C4 is located close to the path of the jet from the black hole and is found to have at least about 700 light-years long arms.
- Researchers believe that C4 could be a massive star, either by itself or with a companion star.
- The X-rays from C4 could be caused by the collision between the particles in the jet and the gas in a wind blowing away from the star.
- A paper describing these results appears in a recent issue of The Astrophysical Journal.
- Chandra is the only X-ray observatory capable of seeing this feature.
- This is not the first time astronomers have seen a black hole jet running into other objects in Cen A.
- Astronomers are trying to determine why C4 has this different post-contact appearance, but it could be related to the type of object that the jet is striking or how directly the jet is striking it.
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