Astronomers Catch Unprecedented Features at Brink of Active Black Hole

In this artist’s concept, a stream of matter trails a white dwarf (sphere at lower right) orbiting within the innermost accretion disk surrounding 1ES 1927’s supermassive black hole. Astronomers developed this scenario to explain the evolution of rapid X-ray oscillations detected by ESA’s (European Space Agency) XMM-Newton satellite. ESA’s LISA mission, due to launch in the next decade, should be able to confirm the presence of an orbiting white dwarf by detecting the gravitational waves it produces. Credit: NASA/Aurore Simonnet, Sonoma State University

The source is 1ES 1927+654, a galaxy located about 270 million light-years away in the constellation Draco. It harbors a central black hole with a mass equivalent to about 1.4 million Suns.

“In 2018, the black hole began changing its properties right before our eyes, with a major optical, ultraviolet, and X-ray outburst,” said Eileen Meyer, an associate professor at UMBC (University of Maryland Baltimore County). “Many teams have been keeping a close eye on it ever since.”

She presented her team’s findings at the 245th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in National Harbor, Maryland. A paper led by Meyer describing the radio results was published Jan. 13 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

After the outburst, the black hole appeared to return to a quiet state, with a lull in activity for nearly a year. But by April 2023, a team led by Sibasish Laha at UMBC and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, had noted a steady, months-long increase in low-energy X-rays in measurements by NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and NICER (Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer) telescope on the International Space Station. This monitoring program, which also includes observations from NASA’s NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) and ESA’s (European Space Agency) XMM-Newton mission, continues.

The increase in X-rays triggered the UMBC team to make new radio observations, which indicated a strong and highly unusual radio flare was underway. The scientists then began intensive observations using the NSF NRAO’s VLBA and other facilities. The VLBA, a network of radio telescopes spread across the U.S., combines signals from individual dishes to create what amounts to a powerful, high-resolution radio camera. This allows the VLBA to detect features less than a light-year across at 1ES 1927’s distance.

This text is adapted from a press release shared by NASA. Read their complete release.

Access high-resolution versions of these supplemental images in SVS.

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Original release text by Francis Reddy
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

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This news article was originally published on the NRAO website on January 13, 2025.