The “monster king” is wreaking havoc on its surroundings with such intensity that it has been “blinding” telescopes from a distance of 240 million light-years away.
According to SciTech Daily, the images released by the team operating NASA/ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope reveal a spiral galaxy IC 4709, which harbors a “monster king” at its core.
This galaxy is located 240 million light-years away in the constellation Telescopium.
Galaxy IC 4709 with a heart that is an incredibly large black hole – (Image: NASA/ESA).
In the Hubble images, IC 4709 appears as a stunning spiral disk filled with stars, surrounded by a hazy halo.
However, the most striking feature is its bright “heart.”
The hearts of galaxies are supermassive black holes, commonly referred to as “monster black holes.”
Our own Milky Way galaxy, a large galaxy in the universe, also hosts a beast named Sagittarius A* at its center.
Sagittarius A* is already substantial compared to other black holes in the universe, weighing about 4.3 million solar masses.
However, the object at the center of IC 4709 can truly be called the king of monsters: It weighs 65 million solar masses.
Unlike the dormant “heart” of our galaxy, the black hole in IC 4709 is currently in a state of intense activity, voraciously consuming material around it.
This process creates a spiral gas disk surrounding the black hole, with the gas colliding and heating up as it spirals inward.
The disk reaches such high temperatures that it emits a significant amount of electromagnetic radiation, ranging from infrared to visible light, ultraviolet, and even X-rays.
To present the most stunning images to the public, data from two Hubble surveys and the Swift X-ray/UV telescope have been combined.
Supermassive black holes at such a relatively “close” distance promise to help scientists understand more about black holes in more distant galaxies, as well as gain insights into the evolution of the universe in the past.
