{"id":116159,"date":"2020-11-21T23:25:00","date_gmt":"2020-11-22T07:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/11\/hubble-captures-a-black-holes-shadow-beams-yawning-across-space"},"modified":"2020-11-21T23:25:00","modified_gmt":"2020-11-22T07:25:00","slug":"hubble-captures-a-black-holes-shadow-beams-yawning-across-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/11\/hubble-captures-a-black-holes-shadow-beams-yawning-across-space","title":{"rendered":"Hubble Captures a Black Hole\u2019s \u2018Shadow Beams\u2019, Yawning Across Space"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/hubble-captures-a-black-holes-shadow-beams-yawning-across-space.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In images from the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists have spotted an entirely new phenomenon. Reaching tens of thousands of light-years into the void of space, vast shadows stretch from the centre of the galaxy IC 5063, as though something is blocking the bright light from therein.<\/p>\n<p>You\u2019ve probably seen something very like it before \u2013 bright beams from the Sun when it\u2019s just below the horizon and clouds or mountains only partially block its light, known as <a href=\"http:\/\/optics.kulgun.net\/Rays\/\">crepuscular rays<\/a>. According to astronomers, the shadows from IC 5063 could be something very similar. They\u2019re just a whole lot bigger \u2013 at least 36,000 light-years in each direction.<\/p>\n<p>IC 5063, a galaxy 156 million light-years away, is a <a href=\"https:\/\/astronomy.swin.edu.au\/cosmos\/A\/Active+Galactic+Nuclei\">Seyfert galaxy<\/a>. This means it has an active nucleus; the supermassive black hole at its centre is busily guzzling down material from a dense accretion disc and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/feed-your-black-hole-fever-with-the-first-direct-image-of-the-dusty-donut-surrounding-one\">torus<\/a> of dust and gas around it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In images from the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists have spotted an entirely new phenomenon. Reaching tens of thousands of light-years into the void of space, vast shadows stretch from the centre of the galaxy IC 5063, as though something is blocking the bright light from therein. You\u2019ve probably seen something very like it before \u2013 [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,1635],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology","category-materials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}