Adaptive optics pinpoints two supermassive black holes in colliding galaxies

Santa Cruz (May 17th, 2007) Astronomers have used powerful adaptive optics technology at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii to reveal the precise locations and environments of a pair of supermassive black holes at the center of an ongoing collision between two galaxies 300 million light-years away.

The new observations of the galaxy merger known as NGC 6240 reveal that each of the black holes resides at the center of a rotating disk of stars and is surrounded by a cloud of young star clusters formed in the merger, said Claire Max, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

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