Giant Black Hole's Massive Jets Get Close-Up

Merging X-ray data (blue) from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory with microwave (orange) and visible images reveals the jets and radio-emitting lobes emanating from Centaurus A's central black hole.

Energetic jets spewed forth from a galaxy's supermassive black hole got a close-up in their most detailed image ever taken by Earth radio telescopes. The picture shows jets racing away at one-third the speed of light from a huge black hole weighing 55 million times the sun's mass. Most matter falling toward a black hole becomes trapped, but some matter at the base of the jets gets ejected outward at about one-third the speed of light. In this case, the black hole sits at the center of the Centaurus A galaxy.


The matter in the jets has created a pair of giant radio-emitting lobes that each stretch almost a million light-years long. That makes the Centaurus A galaxy appear almost 20 times the size of a full moon when seen in radio waves, despite being 12 million light-years away from Earth. Space.com