Hubble captures a massive black hole blazing fiery plasma trails across the cosmos
The focus of this new image share from NASA — a photo captured by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2012 — is Hercules A.
The distant galaxy, also known as 3C 348, is the bright spot right in the middle of the below image. Those long, gorgeous trails of red are plasma jets that span roughly 1.5 million light-years of distance. It's because of the massive black hole that sits at the center of 3C 348.
Image: NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)
It's an elliptical galaxy that's roughly 1,000 times larger than our own Milky Way. Same goes for the black hole the galaxy formed around; it's also about 1,000 times larger than the one at the center of our Milky Way, at around 2.5 billion solar mass. (Many galaxies are believed to have formed around supermassive black holes.) Read more...
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