A blazar is an active galactic nucleus (AGN) with a relativistic jet (a jet composed of ionized matter traveling at nearly the speed of light) directed towards an observer.

Blazars are powerful sources of emission across the electromagnetic spectrum and are observed to be sources of high-energy gamma ray photons.

Blazars are highly variable sources, often undergoing rapid and dramatic fluctuations in brightness on short timescales (hours to days).

In 2009, a team of astronomers using the Swift spacecraft used the luminosity of S5 0014+81 to measure the mass of its super-massive black hole. They found it to be about 10,000 times more massive than the black hole at the center of our galaxy, or equivalent to 40 billion solar masses

  • xachugesh@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    This is cool and all but it is a bit misleading.

    The Schwarzschild Radius of a 40GM object is around 790AU, the orbit of Neptune is around 30AU. I’m sure the volume that the object can effect is beyond massive, but the “size” of a SMBH is defined by the point at which not even light can escape, the Schwarzschild Radius.

    Still a Schwarzschild Radius of over 26 times the size of Neptune’s orbit is insane.

  • qooqie@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Well well well, if it isn’t my old foe; incomprehensible sizes of the giants in our universe.

  • Zellith@kbin.social
    1·
    1 year ago

    Diameter of 240 billion kilometers… The NASA Parker Solar Probe spacecraft went 535,000 kilometers per hour assisted by the suns gravity. (For reference, 36,400 is how fast New Horizons is traveling now) If a probe were to maintain a speed of 535,000 and attempt to fly accross the diameter of the black hole, it would take it maybe 52 or so years?

    Im bad at math so I hope someone can correct me!