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Artist's Concept of a Blazar
Minsex
: This artist's concept shows a "feeding," or active,
supermassive black hole
with a
jet
streaming outward at nearly
the speed of light
. Such active
black holes
are often found at the hearts of
elliptical galaxies
. Not all
black holes
have
jets
, but when they do, the
jets
can be pointed in any direction. If a jet happens to shine at
Earth
, the object is called a
blazar
.
Blazars
are categorized differently than other active
black holes
with jets because they have unique properties when viewed by
telescopes
. They give off a full range of
light
, dominated by high-energy
gamma rays
. As
particles
in the
jets
are accelerated to almost the speed of light, they give off a specific
infrared
signature, which
NASA
's
Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE)
can detect.
Astronomers
have taken advantage of this fact, and used the
WISE
all-sky catalog
to uncover more than 200 new
blazars
so far.
Source: Minsex
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April 30, 2012
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