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Small Satellite Galaxy Pulled Into Supermassive Black Hole
An artists conception of a small satellite galaxy being pulled into a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. There is growing evidence that several million years ago, the center of the Milky Way was the site of all manner of celestial fireworks. A pair of astronomers from Vanderbilt University and the Georgia Institute of Technology have proposed that a single event can explain all the "forensic" clues.
In a published study, the astronomers describe how this event, a violent collision and merger between a galactic black hole and an intermediate-sized black hole in one of the small satellite galaxies that circle the Milky Way, could have produced the features that point to a more violent past for the galactic core.
The research was supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program (grant AST 08-47696) and by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.
To read more about this research, see the Vanderbilt news story CSI: Milky Way. (Date of Image: March 2013)
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Credit: Julie Turner, Vanderbilt University
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