The newly released findings have revealed that universe’s most luminous persistently bright astronomical objects, mostly known as blazars come from some of the darkest and powerful sources. Among these celestial wonders is the active galaxy TXS 0128+554, which is about 500 million light-years away from Earth. This galaxy really highlights what a galaxy’s true orientation may be. For one thing, its jets are tilted at roughly 50 degrees from our line of sight, which bestows some unusual properties.
Blazars, a special type of active galaxy fueled by supermassive black holes at their centers. These supermassive black holes can have masses from hundreds of thousands to billions solar masses. Most remarkably, more than 90% of the universe’s brightest lights are blazars, highlighting their importance in cosmological research.
One of the best-known blazars is 3C 279. In 2015, it took center stage in a record-breaking gamma-ray flare that thrilled astronomers. NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope recorded the stunning sequence of events with its Large Area Telescope (LAT). This is just a tiny glimpse into how the new observational technology is enhancing our understanding of these remarkable phenomena.
The same thing happened with the active galaxy Markarian 573. It’s one of the best observations of two cones of emissions that pour out from its central supermassive black hole. New imaging of Markarian 573 was only made possible through the availability of all-sky X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. It included radio observations from New Mexico’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array. The resulting images incorporated visible light data from the Hubble Space Telescope, providing a comprehensive view of this dynamic galaxy.
The resulting movie of Markarian 573 showed two different periods of activity in its jets. These actions formed an obvious divide between the lobes and the black hole. This gap shows an important window into the hitherto unknown and bizarre behavior of SMHB emissions.
NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is central to the effort to monitor and understand these violent cosmic events. As you can see, the LAT is purpose built to discover and follow up on gamma-ray flares. These flares are key to unraveling the processes that fuel blazars and other high-energy astrophysical phenomena.