Artist’s concept of a jet from an active black hole that is perpendicular to the host galaxy (left) compared to a jet that is launching directly into the galaxy (right) illustrated over an image of a spiral galaxy from the Hubble Space Telescope. SOFIA found a strange black hole with jets that are irradiating the host galaxy, called HE 1353-1917. The galaxy has 10 times more ionized carbon than its stars could produce. The gas, illustrated in blue in the right image, is concentrated near the galaxy’s center, which indicates that the intense radiation from the black hole’s jet is the source of the excess gas. This contradicts the long-held assumption that ionized carbon primarily indicates the presence of newborn stars, and forces scientists to reevaluate the effect black holes have on galaxies.
