File:Hubble Gazes Into a Black Hole of Puzzling Light (32167894831).jpg

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The beautiful spiral galaxy visible in the center of the image is known as RX J1140.1+0307, a galaxy in the Virgo constellation imaged by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, and it presents an interesting puzzle. At first glance, this galaxy appears to be a normal spiral galaxy, much like the Milky Way, but first appearances can be deceptive!

The Milky Way galaxy, like most large galaxies, has a supermassive black hole at its center, but some galaxies are centered on lighter, intermediate-mass black holes. RX J1140.1+0307 is such a galaxy — in fact, it is centered on one of the lowest black hole masses known in any luminous galactic core. What puzzles scientists about this particular galaxy is that the calculations don’t add up. With such a relatively low mass for the central black hole, models for the emission from the object cannot explain the observed spectrum. There must be other mechanisms at play in the interactions between the inner and outer parts of the accretion disk surrounding the black hole.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt

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Source Hubble Gazes Into a Black Hole of Puzzling Light
Author NASA Goddard Space Flight Center from Greenbelt, MD, USA

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This image was originally posted to Flickr by NASA Goddard Photo and Video at https://flickr.com/photos/24662369@N07/32167894831 (archive). It was reviewed on 12 May 2018 by FlickreviewR 2 and was confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-by-2.0.

12 May 2018

Public domain This file is in the public domain in the United States because it was solely created by NASA. NASA copyright policy states that "NASA material is not protected by copyright unless noted". (See Template:PD-USGov, NASA copyright policy page or JPL Image Use Policy.)
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current00:13, 12 May 2018Thumbnail for version as of 00:13, 12 May 20181,280 × 634 (107 KB)OceanAtoll (talk | contribs)Transferred from Flickr via #flickr2commons

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