After analyzing images of the Sombrero galaxy taken by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), Elio Quiroga Rodríguez of Mid-Atlantic University in Spain identified a special object that turned out to be a galaxy with an active galactic nucleus (AGN). . The discovery was reported in an article posted on the prepress server Aug. arXiv.

An AGN is a compact region at the center of a galaxy that is brighter than the light of the surrounding galaxy. Research shows that AGNs are very energetic due to the presence of a black hole or star formation in the galactic core.

Astronomers generally divide AGN into two groups based on the characteristics of its emission lines. Type 1 AGNs show wide and narrow emission lines, while Type 2 AGNs show only narrow emission lines. However, observations have shown that there are some AGN transitions between different spectral types; hence they were called variable view (CL) AGN.

The Sombrero Galaxy (also known as Messier 104 or NGC 4594) is a barred spiral galaxy about 31 million light-years away, between the boundaries of the constellations Virgo and Raven. With a mass of about 800 billion solar masses, it is one of the largest objects in the Virgo galaxy cluster. It also contains a rich system of globular clusters.

Rodriguez recently studied HST images focusing on a specific object in the halo of the Sombrero galaxy. He found that this object, previously classified as a globular cluster candidate, could be an SBc-type spiral galaxy with bridges with an AGN at its center.

“While reviewing the M104 halo images available on the HST Legacy website (HST recommendation 9714, PI: Keith Noll), the author observed an object at 12:40:07.829-11:36:47.38 (in j2000) that made about four Surveys of VO instruments. suggests that the object is an SBc galaxy from an AGN (Seifert),” the article states.

The object is cataloged in the Pan-STARRS1 data archive as PSO J190.0326-11.6132. Analyzing data from the Aladdin RGB Sky Atlas, Rodriguez found that PSO J190.0326-11.6132 is a galaxy with a dominant central arm, a core, and two spiral arms, possibly containing hot young stars and dust. The astronomer proposes to call the newly discovered galaxy the “Iris galaxy.”

The study showed that PSO J190.0326-11.6132 had a radial speed of 1359 km/h. Rodriguez suggests that if the object were gravitationally bound to the Sombrero galaxy, it could be a companion to it, with an angular size of about 1,000 light-years.

However, the author of the article pointed out that if the Iris galaxy is not connected to the Sombrero galaxy, its distance could be about 65 million light years. In this scenario, the angular size of the newly discovered object should be about 71,000 light-years.

The measured X-ray luminosity of the Iris Galaxy was about 18 tredecillion erg/s, assuming 65 million light-years away. This glow indicates the presence of an active galactic nucleus, but more observations are needed to determine whether it is a type 1 or type 2 AGN.