COLLECTION NAME:
NASA Hubble Space Telescope Collection
Record
Title:
Black Hole in Search of a Home
Object Name:
HE0450-2958
General Information:
What is a News Nugget? News Nuggets are bulletins from the world of astronomy. A team of European astronomers has used two of the most powerful astronomical facilities available, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) at Cerro Paranal, to find a bright quasar without a massive host galaxy. Quasars are powerful and typically very distant sources of prodigious amounts of radiation. They are commonly associated with galaxies containing an active central black hole. The team confidently concludes that the quasar on the left, HE0450-2958 (in the center, distance about 5 billion light-years) does not have a massive host galaxy. The quasar HE1239-2426 to the right (at a distance of 1.5 billion light-years), has a normal host galaxy which displays large spiral arms. Read more: * Release Text [ http://hubblesite.o… ]
Acknowledgement:
*Credit:* NASA [ http://www.nasa.gov/ ], ESA [ http://www.spacetel… ], ESO, F. Courbin (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland) and P. Magain (Universite de Liege, Belgium)
Fast Facts:
Technical facts about this news release: Back to entire collection [ http://hubblesite.o… ] Next release [ http://hubblesite.o… ] Previous release [ http://hubblesite.o… ]
note:
*Description*: This image shows the quasar HE0450-2958 after advanced image processing known as MCS-deconvolution. Thanks to this technique, it is possible to remove the brilliant glare from the quasar itself. The most interesting feature in the image is the nearly total absence of starlight from a host galaxy. The processing also reveals an interesting smaller cloud of gas about 2,500 light-years wide, which the scientists call "the blob," just next to the quasar. Very Large Telescope (VLT) observations show this cloud to be glowing because it is bathed in the intense radiation coming from the quasar. Most likely, it is the gas from this ?blob' that feeds the supermassive black hole, thereby allowing it to shine as a quasar.
facet_what:
ESO
facet_where:
Belgium
facet_when:
September 14, 2005
facet_when_year:
2005
UID:
SPD-HUBBLE-STScI-2005-13b
Release Date:
September 14, 2005 02:00 PM (EDT)
