Abell 1795, Galaxy Cluster, Optical
A bright, long duration flare may be the first recorded event of a black hole destroying a star in a dwarf galaxy. The dwarf galaxy is located in the galaxy cluster Abell 1795, about 800 million light years from Earth. The black hole in this dwarf galaxy may be only a few hundred thousand times as massive as the Sun, making it ten times less massive than the Galaxy's supermassive black hole. This places it in what astronomers call an "intermediate mass black hole" category. Astronomers believe that intermediate mass black holes may be the seeds that ultimately formed the supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies like the Milky Way. Finding additional nearby examples should teach us about how these primordial galaxies from the early universe grew and evolved over cosmic time. Release date January 8, 2014.
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Photo credit: © Photo Researchers / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
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