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Image Credit: Nasa
NASA Finds ‘Sideways’ Black Hole Using Legacy Data, New Techniques
- NASA researchers have discovered a perplexing case of a black hole that appears to be “tipped over,” rotating in an unexpected direction relative to the galaxy surrounding it.
- Using the new methods, astronomers at Ames unexpectedly found four long plumes of plasma – hot, charged gas – emanating from NGC 5084.
- Hot gas plumes are not often spotted in galaxies, and typically only one or two are present.
- Archived data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile then revealed another quirk of NGC 5084: a small, dusty, inner disk turning about the center of the galaxy.
- This, too, suggested the presence of a black hole there, and, surprisingly, it rotates at a 90-degree angle to the rotation of the galaxy overall; the disk and black hole are, in a sense, lying on their sides.
- Using the techniques developed at NASA’s Ames Research Center, the researchers found surprising characteristics about galaxy NGC 5084
- More studies will be needed to determine what event or events led to the current strange structure of this galaxy.
- The image analysis method developed by the team – called Selective Amplification of Ultra Noisy Astronomical Signal, or SAUNAS – was described in The Astrophysical Journal in May 2024.
- The discovery was made possible by new image analysis techniques developed at NASA’s Ames Research Center.
- The paper presenting this research was published Dec. 18 in The Astrophysical Journal.
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