JWST Reveals Heart of Galaxy M77 Is Being Consumed by Its Own Supermassive Black Hole
Messier 77 normally looks relatively serene in images, but who knew the supermassive black hole tugging at the galaxy's heartstrings could be so violent? New Webb images have captured the bright brilliant core 45 million light years away outshining almost everything nearby.
Folks know M77 by several names, including NGC 1068 and the Squid Galaxy, but its real claim to fame is that it is one of the nearest and brightest Seyfert galaxies visible from Earth. Seyferts typically host unusually active nuclei, and in M77 that nucleus is powered by a supermassive black hole estimated at about 8 million times the Sun’s mass. The black hole itself is not what we see—instead there an intense radiating light brighter than the rest of the galaxy combined.
The black hole is not inhaling the entire galaxy at once; instead, it is feeding on matter in the central regions, creating an active galactic...
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