Sunny Priyan
Light from the spiral galaxy UGC 11397 in Lyra took 250 million years to reach Hubble, capturing a glimpse of the distant past.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. J. Koss, A. J. Barth
At first glance, UGC 11397 appears to be an average spiral galaxy: it sports two graceful spiral arms that are illuminated by stars and defined by dark, clumpy clouds of dust.
Image Credit: Meta AI
What makes UGC 11397 unique is its core—a supermassive black hole 174 million times the mass of the Sun, putting on a brilliant cosmic light show as it devours nearby matter.
Image Credit: Pixabay
In galaxies like UGC 11397, thick dust clouds hide the black hole’s energetic light show-from gamma rays to radio waves-making its activity invisible in optical light.
Image Credit: Freepik
UGC 11397's bright X-ray emission pierced through the dust, revealing an active black hole and earning it the classification of a Type 2 Seyfert galaxy.
Image Credit: Freepik
Using Hubble, scientists are studying galaxies like UGC 11397 to understand how supermassive black holes grow and how stars form in their extreme central environments.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. J. Koss, A. J. Barth