The Andromeda galaxy is the nearest and the brightest galaxy in our neighborhood. The galaxy is huge and is going to collide with Milky Way in the future. We know about the black hole Saggitarius A*, which is at the center of our galaxy Milky Way.
What about the black hole at the center of the Andromeda galaxy?
Learning about the black hole at the center of Andromeda galaxy is not as straightforward as the Milky way galaxy or any other black hole. This black hole is quite odd than you find in most galaxies.
The black holes at the center of the Galaxy are the Nuclei of the galaxy. The core of the Andromeda galaxy looks very bright and given the size of this galaxy, there must be a very big black hole at the center of Andromeda.
When the Hubble telescope was focused on the center of the Andromeda galaxy. It found that the Andromeda galaxy’s core has a double structure. You can see it in the picture below.
There are two bright star-like structures. Scientists call it a concentration. The bright big one is a P1 and the dimmer small one is a P2. They are 5 light years apart from each other. From these P1 & P2, P1 is a little away from the center and the P2 is very near to the center. So, scientists believe the P2 area hosts the black hole. The Black hole of Andromeda is very dim and you can not see it.
How big is the Andromeda black hole?
The mass of this black hole can be in the range of 30-50 Million Solar masses. In our galaxy Milky Way, the Saggitarius A* is just 4.1 Million Solar masses big. If you compare, the Andromeda galaxy black hole is 10-12 times bigger than the black hole in the Milky Way.
Scientists also believe that the P1 region is the center of another galaxy. It was eaten up by Andromeda galaxy a long time ago. It is possible that P1 and P2 are revolving around the supermassive black hole and will merge into this black hole. Maybe in the future JWST will find something about this black hole or if we have much better telescopes then we will know more details about the black hole at the center of the andromeda galaxy.
Do you know? Scientists found an exoplanet in the andromeda galaxy.
