Post #377

Black holes are often described as the monsters of the universe – tearing apart stars, consuming anything that comes too close, and holding light captive. But evidence from Hubble shows a black hole in a new light: fostering, rather than suppressing, star formation. Hubble observations of the dwarf starburst galaxy Henize 2-10 clearly show a gas outflow stretching from the black hole to a bright starbirth region, kind of like an umbilical cord, triggering the already dense cloud into forming clusters of stars. The outflow was moving at about 1 million miles per hour, slamming into the dense gas like a garden hose hitting a pile of dirt and spreading out. Newborn star clusters dot the path of the outflow's spread, their ages also calculated by Hubble.