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In the images of the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists have identified a completely new phenomenon. Reaching tens of thousands of light-years into the vacuum of space, vast shadows extend from the center of the galaxy IC 5063, as if something was blocking the bright light from there.
You’ve probably seen something very similar before: the sun’s light rays when it’s just below the horizon and clouds or mountains only partially block its light, known as crepuscular rays. According to astronomers, IC 5063’s shadows could be something very similar. They are just much larger – at least 36,000 light-years in each direction.
IC 5063, a galaxy 156 million light years away, is a Seyfert galaxy. This means that it has an active core; the supermassive black hole at its center is busily absorbing material from a dense accretion disk and a torus of dust and gas around it.
Although the supermassive black hole itself does not emit light, the intense forces involved in this massive accretion process generate so much heat and light from the region around the black hole that the galactic core absolutely blazes out into space. It is this light, astronomers think, that is being obscured. The obstruction? Probably caused by dust.
Crepuscular rays. (Zolt Levay / Hubblesite)
“We think we have found evidence that there is probably dust throughout the galaxy that scatters light from the accreting black hole into the active core of the galaxy and that the light can illuminate almost the entire galaxy,” said astronomer Peter Maksym. of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
“We know that this galaxy has recently merged with another galaxy and that it could raise dust anywhere. It is also possible that the black hole’s jets are raising dust from close to the core.”
The strange features were originally spotted in December 2019 by amateur space image processor Judy Schmidt. It was reworking raw data from new observations from the Hubble Space Telescope into images, obtained in 2018 and 2019.
There was no sign of the cone-shaped features in the original images. But Schmidt immediately noticed something wrong.
“I noticed the dark rays almost immediately after opening the file in Photoshop and started working on improving them to make sure what I thought I was seeing was there,” explained Schmidt.
“Even after processing it, I kept blinking wondering if I was seeing what I thought I was seeing,” she added.
(NASA, ESA, STScI and WP Maksym / CfA)
She posted his strange discovery on Twitterand the astronomers – including Maksym – were immediately intrigued. He and colleagues, who were already working on the jets produced by IC 5063’s supermassive black hole, began work on studying the strange, shadowy shapes.
They used near-infrared observations taken in March and November with the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3. At those wavelengths, the instrument can peer through the dust to gain a better understanding of the galaxy’s center.
Based on the team’s analysis, there may be gaps or free lanes in the torus of dust and gas that surrounds the innermost core of IC 5063. If the black hole were tilted to one side relative to the galactic plane, some light coming from the galaxy, the nucleus would be blocked by the densest regions of the torus, but some would slip out of these cracks, creating colossal galactic crepuscular rays.
(NASA, ESA and Z. Levy / STScI)
The spaces should be stable for at least 36,000 years for the rays to create more or less coherent straight lines. This poses some constraints that can help astronomers better understand the dynamics at play at the center of a galaxy 156 million light-years away.
If it is the torus responsible, that tells us that the structure is quite thin and could be deformed by the pair in the galactic center.
“The discovery shows that the torus, or ring, could be very thin – light seems to come out almost everywhere. If the torus is big enough it becomes unstable, gravity and rotation that hold it together point in a direction near the black hole and in a different direction as the influences of the galaxy start to become important. It looks like a warp or a warp, “Maksym said.
“Scientifically, it is showing us something that is difficult – usually impossible – to see directly. We know this phenomenon should happen, but in this case, we can see the effects across the galaxy. Knowing more about the geometry of the torus will have implications for it. anyone trying to understand the behavior of supermassive black holes and their environment. “
(NASA, ESA, STScI and WP Maksym / CfA)
Since this is the first time we’ve actually seen it, it may take some time to unravel what’s really going on. There are other possibilities yet to be ruled out. A mysterious encounter may have created unusual X-shaped star orbits. Destruction of dust by hot streams from the galactic core has also not been entirely ruled out, though the team notes that it seems unlikely, based on their model.
The next step will be to make more observations in other wavelengths with a range of instruments and use this new data as a basis for performing detailed models.
“This is a project that is just asking for new data because it raises more questions than answers,” Maksym said.
The research was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
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