Chandra detection of a circumnuclear torus
Most galaxies host supermassive black holes at their nuclei, each with millions or billions of solar-masses of material. There is thought to be a torus of dust and gas around the black holes, and an accreting disk that becomes very hot as material falls onto it, in turn heating the torus and circumnuclear gas and dust. Such an active galactic nucleus (AGN) radiates across the spectrum while the dust often blocks the innermost regions from view. Powerful bipolar jets of charged particles are often ejected as well. Radiation from the torus can be seen directly at infrared wavelengths and, when it scatters off the fast moving particles, at X-ray energies.
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2019-01-07
