Distant black hole poses for a close-up

1H0707-495

Astronomers have probed closer than ever to a supermassive black hole lying deep at the core of a distant active galaxy that was once thought to be shrouded in dust — which will greatly advance the look captured in this NASA file image from the mid-1990s. Using new data from ESA’s X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission (XMM)-Newton spaceborne observatory, researchers peered into the innermost depths of the object, which lies at the heart of the galaxy known as 1H0707-495.

“We can now start to map out the region immediately around the black hole,” says Andrew Fabian, at the University of Cambridge, who headed the observations and analysis.

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