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June 30, 2025

Image: Hubble captures an active galactic center

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. J. Koss, A. J. Barth
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Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. J. Koss, A. J. Barth

The light that the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope collected to create this image reached the telescope after a journey of 250 million years. Its source was the spiral galaxy UGC 11397, which resides in the constellation Lyra (The Lyre). At first glance, UGC 11397 appears to be an average spiral galaxy: it sports two graceful spiral arms that are illuminated by stars and defined by dark, clumpy clouds of dust.

What sets UGC 11397 apart from a typical spiral lies at its center, where a supermassive black hole containing 174 million times the mass of our sun grows. As a black hole ensnares gas, dust, and even entire stars from its vicinity, this doomed matter heats up and puts on a fantastic cosmic light show.

Material trapped by the black hole emits light from to radio waves, and can brighten and fade without warning. But in some galaxies, including UGC 11397, thick clouds of dust hide much of this energetic activity from view in optical light.

Despite this, UGC 11397's actively growing black hole was revealed through its bright X-ray emission—high-energy light that can pierce the surrounding dust. This led astronomers to classify it as a Type 2 Seyfert galaxy, a category used for active galaxies whose central regions are hidden from view in by a donut-shaped cloud of dust and gas.

Using Hubble, researchers will study hundreds of galaxies that, like UGC 11397, harbor a that is gaining mass. The Hubble observations will help researchers weigh nearby supermassive black holes, understand how black holes grew early in the universe's history, and even study how stars form in the extreme environment found at the very center of a galaxy.

Provided by NASA

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The spiral galaxy UGC 11397, located in Lyra, contains a supermassive black hole with 1.74 × 108 solar masses at its center. Although much of its energetic activity is obscured by dust in visible light, bright X-ray emission reveals its active nucleus, classifying it as a Type 2 Seyfert galaxy. Hubble observations aid in studying such black holes and their environments.

This summary was automatically generated using LLM.