Hubble View Of Runaway Black Hole Leaves Massive Streak Of Stars In Its Wake

The Hubble Space Telescope has imaged a "200,000 light-year-long trail of newborn stars" that may have been left behind by a runaway supermassive black hole.

Video Credit:
Black Hole Animation
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Jeremy Schnittman

Image of Chandra X-Ray Observatory
NASA/CXC and J. Vaughan

3 Black Hole Orbits and Slingshots
Image from paper “A candidate runaway supermassive black hole identified by shocks and star formation in its wake” by PI Pieter Von Dokkum et al.

Schematic illustration of the runaway SMBH scenario as an explanation of the key observed features. Panels 1–5 show a “classical” slingshot scenario (e.g., Saslaw et al. 1974). The background of panel 6 is a frame from an Illustris TNG simulation (Pillepich et al. 2018)

Music Credit:
“Unclaimed Space” by Peter Nickalls [PRS] via Atmosphere Music Ltd. [PRS] and Universal Production Music.