Twelve years ago, scientists noticed that two merging galaxies – about 500 million light-years apart – were emitting large amounts of infrared light.
Unfortunately, its origin could not be determined at the time, but the researchers believed that they were looking for a “strong source of energy”, or something they called a “collision engine”.
Only now, with the help of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), have they finally revealed where the mysterious “engine” is located and how big it is. They described their findings in detail in article published late last year in the journal The Astrophysical. Journal Letters.
“We wanted to find the ‘engine’ that drives this merging galaxy system. We knew this source was hidden deep under cosmic dust, so we couldn’t use visible or ultraviolet light to find it.” she explained Hanae Inami z Hiroshima University.
Although the source in question is small (only 570 light-years in radius, while the entire system is 65,000 light-years in diameter) and far from the centers of both galaxies, it accounts for a whopping 70% of all the infrared light emitted by the merger.
“We want to know what is feeding this source: is it a starburst or a massive black hole? To find the answer to this question, we will use infrared spectra taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. It is unusual for the ‘engine’ to lie outside the main body of the merging galaxies, so we intend to investigate how this powerful source actually got there.” Inami added.
