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[NASA] NASA’s Chandra Finds Small Galaxies May Buck the Black Hole Trend

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NGC 6278 and PGC 039620 are two galaxies from a sample of 1,600 that were searched for the presence of supermassive ****** holes. These images represent the results of a study that suggests that smaller galaxies do not contain supermassive ****** holes nearly as often as larger galaxies do. The study analyzed over 1,600 galaxies that have been observed with Chandra over two decades. Certain X-ray signatures indicate the presence of supermassive ****** holes. The study indicates that most smaller galaxies like PGC 03620, shown here in both X-rays from Chandra and optical light images from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, likely do not have supermassive ****** holes in their centers. In contrast, NGC 6278, which is roughly the same size as the Milky Way, and most other large galaxies in the sample show evidence for giant ****** holes within their cores.
X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/F. Zou et al.; Optical: SDSS; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk

Most smaller galaxies may not have supermassive ****** holes in their centers, according to a recent  study using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. This contrasts with the common idea that nearly every galaxy has one of these giant ****** holes within their cores, as NASA leads the world in exploring how our universe works.

A team of astronomers used data from over 1,600 galaxies collected in more than two decades of the Chandra mission. The researchers looked at galaxies ranging in heft from over ten times the mass of the Milky Way down to dwarf galaxies, which have stellar masses less than a few percent of that of our home galaxy. A paper describing these results has been published in The Astrophysical Journal and is available here

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The team has reported that only about 30% of dwarf galaxies likely contain supermassive ****** holes.

“It’s important to get an accurate ****** hole head count in these smaller galaxies,” said Fan Zou of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who led the study. “It’s more than just bookkeeping. Our study gives clues about how supermassive ****** holes are born. It also provides crucial hints about how often ****** hole signatures in dwarf galaxies can be found with new or future telescopes.”

As material falls onto ****** holes, it is heated by friction and produces X-rays. Many of the massive galaxies in the study contain bright X-ray sources in their centers, a clear signature of supermassive ****** holes in their centers. The team concluded that more than 90% of massive galaxies – including those with the mass of the Milky Way – contain supermassive ****** holes.

However, smaller galaxies in the study usually did not have these unambiguous ****** hole signals. Galaxies with masses less than three billion Suns – about the mass of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a close neighbor to the Milky Way – usually do not contain bright X-ray sources in their centers.

The researchers considered two possible explanations for this lack of X-ray sources. The first is that the fraction of galaxies containing massive ****** holes is much lower for these less massive galaxies. The second is the amount of X-rays produced by matter falling onto these ****** holes is so faint that Chandra cannot detect it.

“We think, based on our analysis of the Chandra data, that there really are fewer ****** holes in these smaller galaxies than in their larger counterparts,” said Elena Gallo, a co-author also from the University of Michigan.

To reach their conclusion, Zou and his colleagues considered both possibilities for the lack of X-ray sources in small galaxies in their large Chandra sample. The amount of gas falling onto a ****** hole determines how bright or faint they are in X-rays. Because smaller ****** holes are expected to pull in less gas than larger ****** holes, they should be fainter in X-rays and often not detectable. The researchers confirmed this expectation. 

However, they found that an additional deficit of X-ray sources is seen in less massive galaxies beyond the expected decline from decreases in the amount of gas falling inwards. This additional deficit can be accounted for if many of the low-mass galaxies simply don’t have any ****** holes at their centers. The team’s conclusion was that the drop in X-ray detections in lower mass galaxies reflects a true decrease in the number of ****** holes located in these galaxies.

This result could have important implications for understanding how supermassive ****** holes form. There are two main ideas: In the first, a giant gas cloud directly collapses into a ****** hole, which contains thousands of times the Sun’s mass from the start. The other idea is that supermassive ****** holes instead come from much smaller ****** holes, created when massive stars collapse.

“The formation of big ****** holes is expected to be rarer, in the sense that it occurs preferentially in the most massive galaxies being formed, so that would explain why we don’t find ****** holes in all the smaller galaxies,” said co-author Anil Seth of the University of Utah.

This study supports the theory where giant ****** holes are born already weighing several thousand times the Sun’s mass. If the other idea were true, the researchers said they would have expected smaller galaxies to likely have the same fraction of ****** holes as larger ones.

This result also could have important implications for the rates of ****** hole mergers from the collisions of dwarf galaxies. A much lower number of ****** holes would result in fewer sources of gravitational waves to be detected in the future by the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna. The number of ****** holes tearing stars apart in dwarf galaxies will also be smaller.

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.

To learn more about Chandra, visit:

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Learn more about the Chandra X-ray Observatory and its mission here:

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News Media Contact

Megan Watzke
Chandra X-ray Center
Cambridge, Mass.
617-496-7998
*****@*****.tld

Corinne Beckinger
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
256-544-0034
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Last Updated
Dec 11, 2025
Editor
Lee Mohon
Contact
Corinne M. Beckinger

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