Thanks to the extraordinary sensitivity of the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), astronomers have detected what they believe is the long-sought radio emission coming from a supermassive black hole at the center of one of our closest neighboring galaxies.
Evidence for the black hole’s existence previously came only from studies of stellar motions in the galaxy and from X-ray observations.
The galaxy, called Messier 32 (M32), is a satellite of the Andromeda Galaxy, our own Milky Way’s giant neighbor. Unlike the Milky Way and Andromeda, which are star-forming spiral galaxies, M32 is an elliptical galaxy, with little star formation. About 2.5 million light-years from Earth, M32 is much smaller than either the Milky Way or Andromeda.
The galaxy M32 is a small satellite of the larger, spiral Andromeda Galaxy (M31), as shown in this Hubble Space Telescope image. The inset is a combined radio/optical/X-ray image of M32. The diffuse purple is the visible starlight of M32.
The central white object in the inset is the center of M32, where there is both radio and X-ray emission. Red shows radio-emitting objects, including a pair of presumed planetary nebulae (left center), and the green is an object strongly emitting X-rays.
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