Discovery of a Dying Supermassive Black Hole Via a 3,000-year-long Light Echo (2 of 3) (IMAGE)

Tohoku University

Discovery of a Dying Supermassive Black Hole Via a 3,000-year-long Light Echo (2 of 3)

Caption

The observational difference between a standard AGN (left) and a dying AGN (right) discovered by this study. In the dying AGN, the nucleus is very faint in any wavelength bands because the AGN activity is already dead, while the extended ionized region is still visible for ~3,000 light years since it takes ~3,000 years for the light to cross the extended region.

Credit

Ichikawa et al.

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Ichikawa et al.

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