And galaxies producing stars at a rapid pace would also be producing many hot, massive, blue stars. That means it’s undergoing rapid star formation. That made sense, too, since Henize 2-10 is known as a starburst galaxy. They thought it was more likely the emissions indicated a supernova remnant. To Reines, emissions from this dwarf galaxy suggested a massive (but not supermassive) black hole. That was the case with Henize 2-10, when Reines first began to study it. And sometimes astronomers disagree on how to interpret the data. The data that come to astronomers from the distant universe isn’t always clear cut. Astronomer Zachary Schutte at Montana State University is the lead author of the new black hole study. The additional surprise was that, rather than suppressing star formation, the outflow was triggering the birth of new stars. ![]() Zachary Schutte, Reines’ graduate student and lead author of the new study, commented:Īt only 30 million light-years away, Henize 2-10 is close enough that Hubble was able to capture both images and spectroscopic evidence of a black hole outflow very clearly. But with the less-massive black hole in Henize 2-10, and its gentler outflow, gas was compressed just enough to precipitate new star formation. Gas clouds caught in the jets’ path would be heated far beyond their ability to cool back down and form stars. This is the opposite effect of what’s seen in larger galaxies, where material falling toward the black hole is whisked away by surrounding magnetic fields, forming blazing jets of plasma moving at close to the speed of light. Newborn star clusters dot the path of the outflow’s spread, their ages also calculated by Hubble. Hubble spectroscopy shows the outflow was moving about 1 million miles per hour (1.6 million km/hr), slamming into the dense gas like a garden hose hitting a pile of dirt and spreading out. The region was already home to a dense cocoon of gas when the low-velocity outflow arrived. Image via Harvard University on Pinterest. Order yours before they’re gone! Astronomer Amy Reines, now at Montana State University. That connection is an outflow of gas stretching across space “like an umbilical cord,” these astronomers said, to a bright region of star formation. Ten years ago, as a graduate student, thinking I would spend my career on star formation, I looked at the data from Henize 2-10 and everything changed.įrom the beginning I knew something unusual and special was happening in Henize 2-10, and now Hubble has provided a very clear picture of the connection between the black hole and a neighboring star forming region located 230 light-years from the black hole. She’s the lead investigator on the new Hubble observations, which were published in the January 19 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Nature. ![]() The new evidence suggests Henize 2-10 does not only have a black hole at its heart, but that the hole is also causing what these astronomers called “a firestorm of new star formation.”Īstronomer Amy Reines at Montana State University published the first evidence for a black hole in Henize 2-10 in 2011. A decade ago, this galaxy set off a debate as to whether something this small could even have a central massive black hole. The little galaxy – which lies 30 million light-years away in the direction of the southern constellation Pyxis – contains only about a tenth the number of our Milky Way’s stars. And they said this black hole appears to be helping to create new stars. Black holes help stars form?Īstronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope said this week (January 19, 2022) they found new evidence for a massive black hole at the heart of the dwarf galaxy Henize 2-10. It contains many hot, young, bluish stars. ![]() In this image, you can see the star birth-region in the left outskirts of the galaxy. Do black holes help stars form? The dwarf starburst galaxy Henize 2-10, shown here, has a gas outflow stretching from its center to a bright star-birth region … “like an umbilical cord,” astronomers said.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |