Credit: H. Ford (JHU/STScI), the Faint Object Spectrograph IDT, and NASA/ESA

NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has provided astronomers with what may be their first direct view of an immense ring of dust which fuels a massive black hole at the heart of the spiral galaxy M51, located 20 million light-years away. Surprisingly, they found that the ring is standing almost perpendicularly to the relatively flat spiral galaxy, like a top spinning on its side with respect to the floor. Even more surprising is the discovery of a secondary ring or dust lane which is contrary to all expectations.

Provider: Hubble Space Telescope | ESA

Image Source: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/opo9217a/

Curator: ESA/Hubble, Garching bei München, Germany

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License