How is the black hole of the Andromeda galaxy powered?

An international scientific team has directly visualized the feeding process of the Andromeda galaxy’s central black hole, it reported this Monday Institute for Astrophysics of the Spanish Canary Islands Archipelago (IAC), who leads the work together with the University of Munich.

The process was visualized by the images of the Hubble and Splitzer space telescopes, and the result of this research was published in the magazine ‘The astrophysical journal’.

The IAC explained that andr galaxyOmeda, which is visible to the naked eye and is one of the closest to the Milky Way, has a supermassive black hole at its center, the mass of which is more than 100 million times that of the Sun.

However, this black hole, as well as the one at the center of the Milky Way, called Sagittarius A*, are the least active known because they emit little radiation.

The activity of a black hole depends on the way it is fed, that is, on how the incoming matter approaches its center.

In case of Milky Way, It is difficult to monitor this activity due to the close position of the Earth in relation to the plane of the galaxy, where the dust obscuration is very high and densely populated by stars; The same does not happen in Andromeda, where it is possible to observe its central black hole with fewer obstacles, the IAC added.

Now, using the combined observations of the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, a scientific team led by the group Computational Astrophysics of the University Observatory of Munich (USM) and the Institute for Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC) he was able to study how the central black hole of the Andromeda galaxy “carefully feeds”.

Black holes “voraciously devour food, yet are sensitive,” explained Christian Alig, USM researcher and first author of the paper, who also noted that when they feed slowly and progressively, they leave no signs of their food; However, when feeding is forced and excessive, their reaction is “violent and aggressive”.

Thanks to two powerful space telescopes, the team discovered that the Andromeda galaxy’s central black hole is fed by long filaments of dust and gas far from the galaxy’s core.

These filaments progressively spiral into the black hole, much like water rushes down a sinkhole, said Almudena Prieto, an IAC researcher and co-author of the study.

The IAC says that while Hubble can see the dimming produced by dust filaments in visible light, Spitzer distinguishes the same dust filaments, but in the infrared range.

In this way, joint observation with both telescopes managed to reveal a complete view of the process of material accretion around the black hole.

Because of the proximity the andromeda galaxySpitzer’s observations of its nucleus are the most detailed to date obtained by this telescope and have a level of precision comparable to that achieved by the Hubble telescope.