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April 30, 2020

Heart of galaxy NGC 1068

Artist impression of the heart of galaxy NGC 1068, which harbors an actively feeding supermassive black hole, hidden within a thick doughnut-shaped cloud of dust and gas. Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array researchers discovered two counter-rotating flows of gas around the black hole. The colors in this image represent the motion of the gas: blue is material moving toward us, red is moving away.

[Research supported by National Science Foundation grant AST 1647375.]

Learn more in the ALMA news story Going against the flow around a supermassive black hole. (Date image taken: Oct. 15, 2019; date originally posted to NSF Multimedia Gallery: April 30, 2020)

Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF; S. Dagnello


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