Black Hole Story Told by a Cosmic Blob and Bubble: Two cosmic structures show evidence for a remarkable change in behavior of a supermassive black hole in a distant galaxy. Using data from our Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes, astronomers are piecing together clues from a cosmic "blob" and a gas bubble that could be a new way to probe the past activity of a giant black hole and its effect on its host galaxy. The Green Blob, a renowned cosmic structure is located about 650 million light years from Earth. Astronomers think that a blast of ultraviolet and X-radiation produced by a supermassive black hole at the center of the host galaxy (only 200,000 light years away) excited the oxygen atoms in a gas cloud, giving the Green Blob its emerald glow.
Image Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/ETH Zurich/L. Sartori et al, Optical: NASA/STScI
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