The ultimate death ray

Centaurus A

The giant galaxy Centaurus A shines by the light of a hundred billion stars, its core hidden behind a dark band of dust.

Now take another look at Centaurus A in X-ray light using the Chandra X-ray telescope.

Centaurus A

Shooting out from the very core of Centaurus A is a jet of energy ploughing through the galaxy at almost the speed of light. The jet originates from, and is powered by, a giant black hole with the mass of a billion Suns. Scattered throughout the galaxy we also see dozens of X-ray blobs. This is X-ray light from ultra-hot gas that is falling into Centaurus A's many stellar mass black holes.

M87

One of the largest galaxies in the universe, M87 is a city of half a trillion stars. At its heart lies one of the greatest black holes, the size of an entire Solar System. This Hubble Space Telescope image shows the glowing core of the galaxy and the jet emerging from it.

3C 273

Similar in size to M87 but forty times further away, is the quasi-stellar object (or quasar) 3C 273. This image in X-ray light is colorized to show the intensity of X-rays. Here we see the core of the galaxy and the emerging jet, 3 million light years in length!

3C296

All giant black holes are thought to produce two jets, in opposing directions. When the jets are close to the line of sight, we may only see the one pointing at us. Here, in galaxy 3C296, we see both jets. The blue image shows how the galaxy looks in visible light, and the red in radio light. The jets shoot straight and true until they emerge from the bounds of the galaxy. Here, they run out of energy and are dispersed by the gas in the galaxy's halo.

Cygnus A

One of the most perfect and powerful set of jets belongs to galaxy Cygnus A (not to be confused with Cygnus X-1, a stellar sized black hole in our own galaxy). To produce such jets requires feeding the giant black hole a full diet of gas and stars. It is believed that these ingredients were provided by a second galaxy that collided and merged with Cygnus A millions of years ago.

NGC 326

Looking at the jets in galaxy NGC 326, we notice that the jets make a dramatic change in direction. Initially pointing 10 o'clock and 4 o'clock, they now point to 8 o'clock and 2 o'clock. The central black hole has changed its orientation, but how? The only thing capable of knocking a giant black hole out of alignment is another giant black hole! This second giant may well have arrived when NGC 326 merged with another galaxy several million years earlier.