STAR RING ROLE

Towards the centre of a spiral galaxy, a ring of stars circles a black hole, VERY LARGE TELESCOPE, 23 NOVEMBER 2022

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Galaxy NGC 1097, in the southern constellation of Fornax, the Furnace, doesn't have a common nickname like some other galaxies, but this rather beautiful barred spiral takes on a different character when you zoom in on its centre, as the ERIS (Enhanced Resolution Imager and Spectrograph) infrared camera at the VLT (Very Large Telescope) in Chile did to take its inaugural image.

From a distance of 45 million lightyears, we can see an active galaxy with a quasar-like core, which is also interacting with a companion. Three supernovae have also been observed in the galaxy since 1992. The ring of bright star-forming regions that has formed around the supermassive black hole at its centre is sending gas and dust inwards. The motion of this material causes new stars to form in the ring, which is 5,000 lightyears across but takes up a portion of the sky less than 0.03 per cent the size of the full Moon.