Swiftly moving gas streamer eclipses supermassive black hole
University College London
The researchers detected a clumpy gas stream flowing quickly outward and blocking 90 percent of the X-rays emitted by the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy. There are other galaxies that show gas streams near a black hole, but they haven’t changed as dramatically. Right after the Hubble Space Telescope had observed NGC 5548 on June 22, 2013, the team discovered unexpected features in the data. Because of this shielding, the persistent wind far away from the nucleus receives less radiation and cools down. ### Team: The team consists of Jelle Kaastra (SRON Utrecht, The Netherlands), Jerry Kriss (Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, USA), Massimo Cappi (INAF-IASF Bologna, Italy), Missagh Mehdipour (SRON Utrecht, The Netherlands), Pierre-Olivier Petrucci (Univ.