Hubble Views a Galaxy with a Voracious Black Hole #SpaceSaturday

Hubble Views a Galaxy with a Voracious Black Hole #SpaceSaturday

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The James Webb space telscope gets most of the press, and rightfully so, but the good old Hubble Space Telescope still has some songs to thing. This apocalyptic track thrums with the beat of celestial destruction: galaxy NGC 4951 with its massive black hole. See more via NASA:

Located in the Virgo constellation, NGC 4951 is located roughly 50 million light-years away from Earth. It’s classified as a Seyfert galaxy, which means that it’s an extremely energetic type of galaxy with an active galactic nucleus (AGN). However, Seyfert galaxies are unique from other sorts of AGNs because the galaxy itself can still be clearly seen – different types of AGNs are so bright that it’s nearly impossible to observe the actual galaxy that they reside within.

Hubble helped prove that supermassive black holes exist at the core of almost every galaxy in our universe. Before the telescope launched into low-Earth orbit in 1990, astronomers only theorized about their existence. The mission verified their existence by observing the undeniable effects of black holes, like jets of material ejecting from black holes and disks of gas and dust revolving around those black holes at very high speeds.

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