![]() “First, with Keck’s NIRC2 instrument, to survey the remnants of galaxy mergers to find hidden dual nuclei - supermassive black holes that will eventually merge - and then, in this particular case, to confirm the presence of two galactic nuclei with Keck’s OSIRIS near-infrared field spectrograph. “It’s super important that we can make these kinds of observations with Keck,” Urry said. Keck Observatory’s OSIRIS near-infrared field spectrograph in Hawaii Yale has maintained a years-long association with Keck that has yielded significant data. Using multiple instruments enabled researchers to observe the side-by-side black holes in different wavelengths and gather a more complete picture of the phenomenon. A key component in such mergers is the behavior of black holes - areas of space that have intense gravity and can grow by gobbling up gas and dust from their immediate surroundings.įor the study, astronomers enlisted a variety of powerful instruments to observe the late-stage merger of the galaxy UGC4211, located 500 million light years from Earth in the constellation Cancer. ![]() However, relatively little is known about the later stages. 9.Ī considerable body of research exists on the early phases of galactic mergers, which occur when gravity slowly draws two or more galaxies together. Urry, part of the international research team that made the discovery, is co-author of a new study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters and presented at the 241 st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle on Jan. “This pair has the closest separation yet measured, only about 750 light years.” “Relatively few dual black holes like this have ever been confirmed,” said Meg Urry, the Israel Munson Professor of Physics and Astronomy in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and director of the Yale Center for Astronomy & Astrophysics. The finding could have a profound impact on our understanding of later-stage galaxy mergers and suggests that the phenomenon of side-by-side black holes occurring during a merger may be more common than previously known. Astronomers have discovered a galactic table for two - a pair of unusually close black holes that are feeding together after their respective galaxies collided.
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