![]() ![]() Two of those jets can be seen in this image, the other two, located approximately 35 or so degrees from these, were lost in the sky glow noise of this cumulative 20 hour exposure.Īlso noticeable is one of this galaxy's two small companions- a relatively diminutive elliptical galaxy that orbits about 42,000 light-years from the larger galaxy's center. ![]() These jets were discovered, optically, back in 1975 with the then new 4-meter reflector at Cerro Tololo Observatory in Chile. This galaxy has four jets emanating from its central black hole. Therefore, to create this image, I used both my telescope in New Mexico and one located near Melbourne, Australia. Fornax is located in the southern part of the sky and cannot be easily seen from the northern hemisphere. The picture is of a galaxy located 45 million light years from your home, in the constellation named Fornax. Most galaxies do not have active jets at any given moment, but all galaxies have jets at one time or another. The portion that escapes, however, is flung far into outer space as a powerful jet of material that is thousands of light-years in length. As the material grows closer, it gains incredible speed so that some of it is able to avoid being sucked onto the black hole's surface. Eventually, some of this matter will stray too close and will be pulled toward the black hole. Over time, black holes, especially those at the center of galaxies, attract an orbiting cloud of gas, dust and more than a few stars, too. Most astronomers are now convinced that these original super-sized black holes were the seeds around which galaxies formed because virtually all galaxies are now known to harbor a black hole of enormous proportions at their centers- including our own Milky Way! The first stars to form after the Big Bang became massive black holes and many attracted an orbiting disk of material. ![]() Thus, the star becomes a practically invisible, black, bottomless pit and is called a black hole. But, following this explosion the star's core continues to shrink until it becomes fantastically dense- a thimble full could weigh more than a planet! This produces intense gravity- so strong that anything coming near is pulled inward. If the star contains more than three times as much material as our Sun, then it, too, will explode when it runs out of fuel. The explosion exposes the star's core- a dense, planet sized ball of material made only of atomic neutrons- and it slowly begins to cool. If a star contains less that two or three times as much material as our Sun, then the force of it's sudden inward rush will rip it apart in an titanic explosion called a supernova. Over time, the nuclear furnace inside a star will only contain iron, and because iron cannot be used as a nuclear fuel, the star will stop releasing enough energy to prevent it from beginning to rapidly collapse again. When the non-stop internal nuclear explosion that powers a star has converted all of its hydrogen into helium, the star inflates and begins a new round of energy release by converting its helium into even heavier elements. They consumed vast amounts of material and therefore only shined for a few hundred million years. These first stars were huge, hot and powerful. Hundreds of millions of years followed before matter started to collect into vast clouds, coalesce and collapse, under its own weight, into the first stars. All the matter in the Universe, all the space and even time, itself, was released during this event. Most astronomers believe that the Universe began about 15 billion years ago with the Big Bang. ![]()
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