https://phys.org/news/2018-06-outflowing-gas-galaxy-supermassive-black.html

Clear evidence for all these processes has been detected in their optical emission lines of ionized atoms, whose velocities can be measured. However it has been much hard to obtain spatial information about the geometry of the excited gas. CfA astronomer Martin Elvis and nine colleagues used the Gemini eight-meter telescope and a powerful new instrument that records both high-resolution spatial (as small as a few hundred light-years in size) and velocity information.

The team studied five relatively nearby galaxies known to have active black hole nuclei with bright atomic emission. They discovered that in all cases the gas has two major components, one rotating and one outflowing. But otherwise the galaxies are all somewhat different: in one the gas rotates opposite to its stars, in another only one lobe of the outflow can be seen, and there are other differences as well. The new paper is just the first in a series expected to probe and model in detail how nuclear black holes grow.

                                                            
                                    
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