Spectacular images captured by a duo of telescopes show how hot gas is being funnelled away from the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy.
Astronomers describe an "exhaust vent" thats channeling this hot gas, connected to a chimney-like structure perpendicular to the plane of our galactic home, the Milky Way.
The images and data show how the supermassive black hole at the galactic centre, known as Sagittarius A*, is both swallowing cosmic material and blasting it outwards into space.
Black holes as bright, energetic objects
Black holes have name for being dark, dense objects from which nothing - not even light - can escape, but in fact black holes can be some of the brightest objects in the Universe.
Astronomers calculate that most major galaxies we know of have a supermassive black hole at their centre, and the process of material falling inwards generates enormous energy, causing these cosmic behemoths to appear as bright galactic cores.
The so-called 'chimney' releasing hot gas from a region around the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy was previously known, and appears in this composite image captured in x-ray by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue) and radio data by the MeerKAT telescope (red).
In the inset image, Chandra x-ray data shows evidence of an exhaust vent structure channelling material away from Sagittarius A*.
Ridges in brighter x-rays appear in white, perpendicular to the plane of the Galaxy.
Astronomers infer these are the walls of a cylindrical tunnel that's funnelling hot gas as it moves upwards along the chimney and away from the centre of the Milky Way.
This vent is near the top of the chimney about 700 lightyears from the centre of our Galaxy.
The exhaust vent may have formed as a result of hot gas rising through the chimney slamming into cooler gas.
The fact that the vent walls appear so bright in x-ray light is due to the powerful of shock waves generated by this collision.
How it happens
Astronomers think the process begins with material falling in towards the black hole.
Eruptions from the black hole drive the gas upwards along chimneys and through the exhaust vent.
Studies show powerful x-ray flares occur every few 100 years at or near the central black hole, and these could be key to the gases' movement up through the vent,
It's estimated that the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy tears apart and consumes a star every 20,000 years or so.
Such a spectacularly catastrophic event could lead to explosive releases of energy that would be channelled through the vent.
Read the full paper at arxiv.org/abs/2310.02892
