Hubble Sees Possible Runaway Black Hole Creating a Trail of Stars

This Hubble Space Telescope archival photo captures a curious linear feature that is so unusual it was first dismissed as an imaging artifact from Hubble's cameras. But follow-up spectroscopic observations reveal it is a 200,000-light-year-long chain of young blue stars. A supermassive black hole lies at the tip of the bridge at lower left. The black hole was ejected from the galaxy at upper right. It compressed gas in its wake to leave a long trail of young blue stars. Nothing like this has ever been seen before in the universe. This unusual event happened when the universe was approximately half its current age.

It's believed the Super Massive Black Hole was likely one of a pair trapped in an orbit of each other following a Galaxy merge but one of the pair was ejected possibly by a third interloper ... what we see in the picture is the Super Massive Black Hole that was ejected trailing a 200,000-light-year-long "contrail" of stars behind it.

"We think we're seeing a wake behind the black hole where the gas cools and is able to form stars. So, we're looking at star formation trailing the black hole," said Pieter van Dokkum of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. "What we're seeing is the aftermath. Like the wake behind a ship we're seeing the wake behind the black hole." The trail must have lots of new stars, given that it is almost half as bright as the host galaxy it is linked to.
www.nasa.gov...

Like a Comet trailing through the sky.

I'm am I following correctly?

The black hole is/was ejecting blue stars one after another...for a distance of 200,000 light-years

My God, it's full of stars...indeed

a reply to: putnam6

Even cooler , the black hole was ejected from the Galaxy above and to the right of it and the trailing gas and dust that followed it out of the Galaxy has produced the Stars that are now trailing behind it ... when I say now I mean 7 Billion years ago.

Let us see how Bruce Willis and his drilling buddies will deal with this one

originally posted by: gortex
a reply to: putnam6

Even cooler , the black hole was ejected from the Galaxy above and to the right of it and the trailing gas and dust that followed it out of the Galaxy has produced the Stars that are now trailing behind it ... when I say now I mean 7 Billion years ago.

So the black hole was essentially dragging the gas and dust for 200,000 light years and the gas and dust were coalescing into one star after another. It was making a star trail 7 billion years ago...

Nothing about space makes sense. From the big bang to Dark matter to Black holes giving birth to stars.

If a black hole can suck in and destroy stars and galaxies where does all the matter go? Why is this one working in reverse?

If a black hole sucks in one end it must spit out the other. what's on the venting side?... and how does it put everything back together again?

Nothing about space makes sense.

Awesome... just awesome.

If it happened here, a black hole being slung out of a galaxy... it's happened elsewhere... (hell, it's happening elsewhere right now) ... I can't wait until the next "imaging artifact" turns out to be a "new" phenomenon.

That's crazy 👍🏼 Do we know how fast the black hole is travelling?

a reply to: Albert999

According to Hubble's website it could travel from Earth to the Moon in 14 minutes.

There's an invisible monster on the loose, barreling through intergalactic space so fast that if it were in our solar system, it could travel from Earth to the Moon in 14 minutes. This supermassive black hole, weighing as much as 20 million Suns, has left behind a never-before-seen 200,000-light-year-long "contrail" of newborn stars, twice the diameter of our Milky Way galaxy. It's likely the result of a rare, bizarre game of galactic billiards among three massive black holes.
hubblesite.org...

Imagine life starting around those stars and how empty the skies would look for them. Outside of a galaxy, far away from any visible stars. An outline of a galaxy far away, all black skies and only distant visible galaxies once they get to telescopes. But until then, just black skies.

We're kinda lucky we're in a good neighborhood.

According to analysis of images from the James Webb telescope black holes don’t exist.

a reply to: gortex

If the Black Hole is/has created thousands of stars in it's wake, what was the material and where was it, before it became these new stars?

Incredibly cool.

It makes our reality seem very minute... and tremendously miraculous...

a reply to: carewemust

It's a Super Massive Black Hole like the one at the center of our Galaxy which was once at the center of its own Galaxy until it merged with another Galaxy , if the astronomers are right it was orbiting the Super Massive Black Hole of the Galaxy its Galaxy merged with but eventually got ejected from that orbit , as it left its host Galaxy its gravity would have dragged Star forming material (gas and dust) in its wake from which the Stars have formed as it travels the Universe.

It would also have likely gathered more material on it's travels given as the trail is 200,000-light-years-long it must have been out there a very long time judging from the distance it is from its original Galaxy ( the one pointed at by the trail).

So the whole “stellar nurseries” was just a fabrication of scientists
Or, are we to still believe stellar nurseries are true?
Are stars “born in two ways?

How many times I have had stellar nurseries preached at me like it’s concluded scientific fact

Anyway, it does seem an unquestionably amazing image
Blackholes create stars?
Where did the black hole come from, what is/was it, where does it get its energy, so many more questions