In a galaxy far, far away, astronomers have discovered an incredibly beautiful phenomenon that sees a star-bursting ring surrounding a supermassive black hole, like the leaves of a rose.
The European Southern Observatory captured the beautiful stellar light show thanks to the MUSE instrument on its Very Large Telescope (VLT).
The amazing image captures the distant spiral system known as NGC 1097, located 45 million light-years from Earth, in the constellation Fornax.
A supermassive black hole lies in the center of the fascinating galaxy and the extraordinary ring of star-forming regions completely surrounds it.
Research suggests that the glowing ring of star-forming regions has a network of gas and dust that turns toward the black hole. The ESO said that the image a “Textbook example” of a star-burst core ring.
The ring gives birth to new stars due to the influx of material into the center of the galaxy. It extends about 5,000 light-years in diameter, meaning it is dwarfed by the full size of the galaxy that extends tens of thousands of light-years.
The darker orbits captured in the MUSE image show dust, gas and debris being fed into the supermassive black hole.
“This process heats the surrounding material and forms a growth disk around the black hole, allowing large amounts of energy into the environment,” explained the ESO.
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“Nearby dust is heated and star formation accelerates in the vicinity of the supermassive black hole, forming the star-burst core ring shown in pink and purple shades in the image,” it added.
MUSE, which stands for Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer, is attached to one of the four 8.2-meter telescopes that make up the Very Large Telescope. Its unique design enables researchers to map complex mechanisms within many galaxies and analyze the formation of stars and galaxies.
The telescope was placed at the ESO’s Paranal Observatory in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile.
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