NGC 3516 Images
An artist's conception of a supermassive black hole with accretion disk (matter swirling into the black hole) and jets (beams of charge particles moving away from the black hole). A supermassive black hole most likely powers the intense brightness characteristic of Active Galactic Nucleus, or AGN, in the center of most galaxies. The black hole pulls matter from nearby stars with such fury that the energy produced in this relatively small region (the size of our solar system) outshines the entire galaxy.
Credit: NASA
Seyfert galaxy NGC 3516 (center source) in the northern sky. The galaxy's bright core is characteristic of an Active Galactic Nucleus, or AGN, whose brightness is most likely powered by a supermassive black hole.
LOCATION: RA 11 06 47.49; DEC +72 34 06.9
CREDIT: Hubble Space Telescope, by Matt Malkan PI, UCLA Astronomy, obtained with the PC2 through a broad red filter.
The figure "PDSchart.tif" is a broadband Power Density Spectrum of the galaxy NGC 3516. The "y" axis is "fluctuation power (arb. units)" and the "x" axis is "temporal frequency (Hz)". This chart shows the "knee" or "cutoff," that section of the curve around 4x10(-7) Hz where the curve begins to drop downward. The knee is significant because it corresponds to the time frequency (in this case, about every 27 days) in which we see energy fluctuation or a cycle of movement. This fluctuation is determined by the physics (mass, size, distance) of the black hole.
CREDIT: Rick Edelson and Paul Nandra
