ALMA Dives into Black Hole’s Sphere of Influence

ALMA has made the most precise measurements of cold gas swirling around a supermassive black hole -- the cosmic behemoth at the center of the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 3258. The multi-color ellipse reflects the motion of the gas orbiting the black hole, with blue indicating motion towards us and red motion away from us. The inset box represents how the orbital velocity changes with distance from theblack hole. The material was found to rotate faster the closer in the astronomers observed to the black hole, enabling them to accurately calculate its mass: a whopping 2.25 billion times the mass of our sun. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), B. Boizelle; NRAO/AUI/NSF, S. Dagnello; Hubble Space Telescope (NASA/ESA); Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey