Astronomers Glimpse Feeding of a Galactic Dragon

This image is an artist's concept of a quasar's "engine" - a black hole pulling in surrounding gas and dust. In this image, the black hole is buried in the center of a disk of gas and dust (brown and yellow cloudy area in center).

The most detailed view yet of the fuel that feeds a monstrous black hole in the center of a remote quasar galaxy has recently been obtained.

A team of radio astronomers has found a cold ring of as around a supermassive black hole in the fiery nuclear region of quasar galaxy "QSO I Zw 1," the most detailed observational evidence yet that gigantic molecular clouds fuel massive star formation in the galactic neighborhood of the black hole. A small fraction of this material might eventually find its way along streamers to the very center, just to be sacrificed to the black hole as fuel to power the brilliant quasar.

The ring of gas clouds is likely the site of intense star formation as the clouds collapse under their own gravity, according to the team, and the observation is a significant first step to determining if there is a link between star formation and quasar activity.

"Quasar galaxies are extremely remote, and this observation is at the limit of current capability," said Dr. Johannes Staguhn, a radio astronomer with Science Systems and Applications, Inc. (SSAI) corporation, Lanham, Md., who is stationed at Goddard, Md. Staguhn is the lead author of a paper on this research to be submitted to the Astrophysical Journal, and the work will be presented January 9 during a poster session at the 201st American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle, Wash.

For the complete article on the observance of the ring of gas around the supermassive black hole, visit:
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2003/0109quasar_galaxy.html