Active Galaxy NGC 1068

The nearby barred-spiral galaxy NGC 1068 serves as a proxy for helping astronomer understand the fireworks taking place at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, driven by eruptions from a supermassive black hole. Because we live inside the Milky Way, much of our view of the galaxy’s center is blocked by intervening clouds of gas and dust. But, looking 45 million light-years away at NGC 1068 gives astronomers a birds-eye view of similar black hole outbursts. The inset Hubble Space Telescope image resolves hydrogen clouds as small as 10 light-years across within 150 light-years of the core. The clouds are glowing because they are caught in a “searchlight” of radiation beamed out of the galaxy’s black hole, which is larger and more active than the black hole in the heart of our galaxy.