RUNAWAY BLACK HOLE NEAR RCP28 (IMAGE)

NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

RUNAWAY BLACK HOLE NEAR RCP28

Caption

This Hubble Space Telescope archival photo captures a curious linear feature that is so unusual it was first dismissed as an imaging artifact from Hubble's cameras. But follow-up spectroscopic observations reveal it is a 200,000-light-year-long chain of young blue stars. A supermassive black hole lies at the tip of the bridge at lower left. The black hole was ejected from the galaxy at upper right. It compressed gas in its wake to leave a long trail of young blue stars. Nothing like this has ever been seen before in the universe. This unusual event happened when the universe was approximately half its current age.

Credit

NASA, ESA, Pieter van Dokkum (Yale); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

Usage Restrictions

No restrictions.

License

Public Domain

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