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Amateur astronomer uses Hubble to peer into heart of nearby galaxy
An American doctor - and amateur astronomer - has used the Hubble Space Telescope to produce a spectacular view of a nearby galaxy, revealing secrets hidden within.
An American doctor - and amateur astronomer - has used the Hubble Space Telescope to produce a spectacular view of a nearby galaxy, revealing secrets hidden within it.
The image shows how a huge black hole produces arching 'arms' of matter spreading through space.
Robert Gendler is an amateur photographer who started taking photographs of the night sky from his driveway in Connecticut.
For this image of Messier 106 - one of the brightest spiral galaxies near our own - Gendler assembled a mosaic of Hubble images, then used his own observations to 'fill in the blanks'.
Using 12.5-inch and 20-inch telescopes, located at very dark remote sites in New Mexico, Gendler and fellow astrophotographer Jay GaBany assembled a spectacular image of the galaxy and its glowing 'arms'.
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Located a little over 20 million light-years away, practically a neighbour in cosmic terms, Messier 106 is one of the brightest and nearest spiral galaxies to our own.
At its heart, as in most spiral galaxies, is a supermassive black hole.
Unlike the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way, which pulls in wisps of gas only occasionally, Messier 106’s black hole is actively gobbling up material.
As the gas spirals towards the black hole, it heats up and emits powerful radiation, in a manner similar to a laser.
The galaxy has another startling feature - instead of two spiral arms, like a normal spiral galaxy, it appears to have four, visible as ghostly wisps of gas.
Unlike the normal arms, these two extra arms are made up of hot gas rather than stars, and their origin had remained unexplained.
The extra arms appear to be an indirect result of jets of material produced by the violent churning of matter around the black hole.
As the material travels further out, it is blown above or below the disc in the opposite direction from the jet, so that the gas curves out of the disc — producing the arching red arms seen here.
