NASA Captures Supermassive Black Holes Merging In A Stunning Celestial Image

NASA¡¯s Chandra X-ray Observatory has captured a stunning celestial image showing two supermassive black holes merging. Sharing the image on its Instagram account, the US space agency recently enthralled netizens with the wondrous capture.

Located in Galaxy NGC 6240, the two black holes are believed to have started merging around 30 million years ago. The new image of NGC 6240 collaborates new X-ray data from Chandra with an optical image from the Hubble Space Telescope originally released in 2008. The data from the new observations is indicated in red, orange, and yellow.

Taking to Instagram, the NASA observatory explained that the two ¡°bright dots¡± near the center of the image depict that black holes. Though they seem close in the image, the black holes are 3,000 light years apart. The post further explains that it will take millions of years for the two black holes to merge completely and form a larger black hole.

NASA

An official blog post by the observatory explains that the proximity of the black holes indicates that these are in the midst of spiraling toward each other. Scientists say that the process began around 30 million years ago but will take another tens or hundreds of millions of years to complete.

Interaction between black holes is an active area of astrophysics that can possibly reveal answers to several cosmic mysteries. ¡°Understanding what happens when these exotic objects interact with one another remains an intriguing question for scientists,¡± reads the post by NASA observatory.

The post notes that such pairs of massive black holes in the process of merging are ¡°expected to be the most powerful sources of gravitational waves in the Universe.¡± Such formations are also considered to be common in the Universe, since many galaxies are found to have supermassive black holes.

It is hence believed that such pairs of massive black holes can explain ¡°some of the unusual behavior¡± observed by rapidly growing supermassive black holes. These include distortion and bending seen in the powerful jets produced by them.