For the first time in history, a team of astronomers led by Megan Argo, from the Jodrell Bank Center for Astrophysics (UK), assists in the awakening of a dormant black hole located 42 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Pisces and with a mass 20 million times greater than that of our Sun. The study was presented at the meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society in Wales (United Kingdom).
In just 10% of galaxies the central black hole is more active, swallowing materials and spitting out high-energy jets. The black hole at the center of the galaxy NGC 660 appears to be precisely of this type, the study showing convincing evidence for the activation of this energetic phase in black holes .
The galaxy in which the awakening black hole is located is a polar ring system. Thanks to the fact that in 2012 and through the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico, astronomers discovered that this galaxy had become hundreds of times brighter in a very short time , they indicated that some object within the galaxy had undergone a relevant change. Until now, we couldn’t tell if it was an exploding star or the central supermassive hole.
For the last three years a team of scientists has been examining data from ground and space telescopes, as well as radio observatories such as e-MERLIN (UK), Westerbork Matrix (Netherlands) and the European VLBI Network (EVN) , whose latest images have revealed a new, very bright emerging radio source at the center of NGC 660, where the central black hole is located.
At the moment, the black hole that is awakening, is hundreds of times brighter than any object of NGC 660 according to the archive of radio images before 2010: “There are many examples of galaxies with active black holes that are already known, to often with huge jets stretching millions of light years into intergalactic space. But NGC 660 is special: for the first time we can see the launch of this activity ”, explain the authors.
