Galaxy NGC 3319 may host an active intermediate-mass black hole, study finds

Chinese astronomers report new findings regarding the central region of a nearby galaxy known as NGC 3319. The researchers found an active intermediate-mass black hole candidate residing in the center of this galaxy. The discovery is detailed in a paper published October 24 on the arXiv pre-print server.

With masses ranging from 100 to 1,000,000 solar masses, the still elusive intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) could fill the gap between stellar-mass black holes and supermassive black holes (SMBHs). Given that the origin of SMBHs remains a mystery, IMBHs could be helpful in explaining this puzzle, as the most massive black holes are thought to be grown from much smaller "seeds."

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Credit: Jiang et al., 2018.

Left: SDSS gri composited image of NGC 3319; right: HST/FOC UV (F220W) image of the central part, the bright compact center is denoted by a green circle with radius of 1′′; the cyan cross is the point source position detected by Chandra, whose image is shown in the bottom left inset. All images are oriented so that north is up, and east is to the left

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