According to a new study, a trail of starlight that was previously thought to indicate a runaway supermassive black hole may actually be a spiral galaxy seen edge-on. Some researchers were skeptical of this interpretation, but astronomer Ignacio Trujillo and his colleagues decided to explore what they believed was the most simple explanation. They compared the velocities of the stars in the linear feature with their positions, a comparison known as a velocity curve, and found that it looked like a spiral galaxy’s plot of its pinwheel rotation. The object’s estimated mass of roughly 100 million suns was also surprisingly large for a simple line of stars, which implied that it was actually a spiral galaxy viewed on its edge. The team compared the characteristics of the linear feature with those of a well-studied spiral galaxy called IC 5249, which astronomers know we see edge-on from Earth. The properties of the galaxy and linear feature matched closely, according to the researchers. The study is in press in Astronomy & Astrophysics and was also submitted on April 24 at arXiv.org.
2023-05-05 08:00:00
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