Whatever one might now call them, I suspect we've all seen them -- at maybe 50 to 70 miles across -- in the sky. Now imagine the same effect, in visible light -- were we there (sitting maybe 20 light years away, at least -- for field of view), we could see this with our own eyes. . . but at 36,000 light years in scale. Astonishing. Here's the NASA / JPL's Hubble wonder of it all:
. . .From 156 million light-years away the heart of active galaxy IC 5063 reveals a mixture of bright rays and dark shadows coming from the blazing core, home of a supermassive black hole.
In this Hubble Space Telescope image, astronomers suggest that a ring of dusty material surrounding the black hole may be casting its shadow into space. According to this scenario, the interplay of light and shadow may occur when light blasted by the monster black hole strikes the dust ring, which is buried deep inside the core. Light streams through gaps in the ring, creating the brilliant cone-shaped rays. However, denser patches in the disk block some of the light, casting long, dark shadows through the galaxy.
This phenomenon is similar to sunlight piercing our Earthly clouds at sunset, creating a mixture of bright rays and dark shadows formed by beams of light scattered by the atmosphere.
However, the bright rays and dark shadows appearing in IC 5063 are happening on a vastly larger scale, shooting across at least 36,000 light-years.
The observations were taken on March 7 and Nov. 25, 2019, by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys. . . .
The Universe, it seems to me. . . becomes greater, and more mystery filled, the more we see of it. I hope you'll never lose that sense of gob-smacked wonder. Onward, grinning. . . me? I positively live for it. Now you know -- fly safely, baby girl.
नमस्ते
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