[NASA] Astronomers Catch Unprecedented Features at Brink of Active Black Hole

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International teams of astronomers monitoring a supermassive ****** hole in the heart of a distant galaxy have detected features never seen before using data from NASA missions and other facilities. The features include the launch of a plasma jet moving at nearly one-third the speed of light and unusual, rapid X-ray fluctuations likely arising from near the very edge of the ****** hole.

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Radio images of 1ES 1927+654 reveal emerging structures that appear to be jets of plasma erupting from both sides of the galaxy’s central ****** hole following a strong radio flare. The first image, taken in June 2023, shows no sign of the jet, possibly because hot gas screened it from view. Then, starting in February 2024, the features emerge and expand away from the galaxy’s center, covering a total distance of about half a light-year as measured from the center of each structure.

NSF/AUI/NSF NRAO/Meyer at al. 2025

The source is 1ES 1927+654, a galaxy located about 270 million light-years away in the constellation Draco. It harbors a central ****** hole with a mass equivalent to about 1.4 million Suns.

“In 2018, the ****** hole began

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right before our eyes, with a major optical, ultraviolet, and X-ray outburst,” said Eileen Meyer, an associate professor at UMBC (

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). “Many teams have been keeping a close eye on it ever since.”

She presented her team’s findings at the 245th meeting of the

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in National Harbor, Maryland. A

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led by Meyer describing the radio results was published Jan. 13 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

After the outburst, the ****** hole appeared to return to a quiet state, with a lull in activity for nearly a year. But by April 2023, a team led by Sibasish Laha at UMBC and NASA’s

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in Greenbelt, Maryland, had noted a steady, months-long increase in low-energy X-rays in measurements by NASA’s

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and

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(Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer) telescope on the

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. This monitoring program, which also includes observations from NASA’s

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(Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) and ESA’s (European Space Agency)

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mission, continues.

The increase in X-rays triggered the UMBC team to make new radio observations, which indicated a strong and highly unusual radio flare was underway. The scientists then began intensive observations using the

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(National Radio Astronomy Observatory)

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(Very Long Baseline Array) and other facilities. The VLBA, a network of radio telescopes spread across the U.S., combines signals from individual dishes to create what amounts to a powerful, high-resolution radio camera. This allows the VLBA to detect features less than a light-year across at 1ES 1927+654’s distance.

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Active galaxy 1ES 1927+654, circled, has exhibited extraordinary changes since 2018, when a major outburst occurred in visible, ultraviolet, and X-ray light. The galaxy harbors a central ****** hole weighing about 1.4 million solar masses and is located 270 million light-years away.

Pan-STARRS

Radio data from February, April, and May 2024 reveals what appear to be jets of ionized gas, or plasma, extending from either side of the ****** hole, with a total size of about half a light-year. Astronomers have long puzzled over why only a fraction of monster ****** holes produce powerful plasma jets, and these observations may provide critical clues.

“The launch of a ****** hole jet has never been observed before in real time,” Meyer noted. “We think the outflow began earlier, when the X-rays increased prior to the radio flare, and the jet was screened from our view by hot gas until it broke out early last year.”

A paper exploring that possibility, led by Laha, is

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at The Astrophysical Journal. Both Meyer and Megan Masterson, a doctoral candidate at the

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in Cambridge who also presented at the meeting, are co-authors.

Using XMM-Newton observations, Masterson found that the ****** hole exhibited extremely rapid X-ray variations between July 2022 and March 2024. During this *******, the X-ray brightness repeatedly rose and fell by 10% every few minutes. Such changes, called millihertz quasiperiodic oscillations, are difficult to detect around supermassive ****** holes and have been observed in only a handful of systems to date. 

“One way to produce these oscillations is with an object orbiting within the ****** hole’s accretion disk. In this scenario, each rise and fall of the X-rays represents one orbital cycle,” Masterson said.  

If the fluctuations were caused by an orbiting mass, then the ******* would shorten as the object fell ever closer to the ****** hole’s event horizon, the point of no return. Orbiting masses generate ripples in space-time called gravitational waves. These waves drain away orbital energy, bringing the object closer to the ****** hole, increasing its speed, and shortening its orbital *******.

Over two years, the fluctuation ******* dropped from 18 minutes to just 7 — the first-ever measurement of its kind around a supermassive ****** hole. If this represented an orbiting object, it was now moving at half the speed of light. Then something unexpected happened — the fluctuation ******* stabilized.

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In this artist’s concept, matter is stripped from a white dwarf (sphere at lower right) orbiting within the innermost accretion disk surrounding 1ES 1927+654’s supermassive ****** hole. Astronomers developed this scenario to explain the evolution of rapid X-ray oscillations detected by ESA’s (European Space Agency) XMM-Newton satellite. ESA’s LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) mission, due to launch in the next decade, should be able to confirm the presence of an orbiting white dwarf by detecting the gravitational waves it produces.

NASA/Aurore Simonnet, Sonoma State University

“We were shocked by this at first,” Masterson explained. “But we realized that as the object moved closer to the ****** hole, its strong gravitational pull could begin to strip matter from the companion. This mass loss could offset the energy removed by gravitational waves, halting the companion’s inward motion.”

So what could this companion be? A small ****** hole would plunge straight in, and a normal star would quickly be torn apart by the tidal forces near the monster ****** hole. But the team found that a low-mass white dwarf — a stellar remnant about as large as Earth — could remain intact close to the ****** hole’s event horizon while shedding some of its matter. A

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led by Masterson summarizing these results will appear in the Feb. 13 edition of the journal Nature.

This model makes a key prediction, Masterson notes. If the ****** hole does have a white dwarf companion, the gravitational waves it produces will be detectable by

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(Laser Interferometer Space Antenna), an ESA mission in partnership with NASA that is expected to launch in the next decade.

Download high-resolution images from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio

By Francis Reddy

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, Greenbelt, Md.

Media Contacts:
Claire Andreoli
301-286-1940
*****@*****.tld
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Jill Malusky
304-456-2236
*****@*****.tld
National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Charlottesville, Va.

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Last Updated

Jan 13, 2025

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