Markarian 421

About Markarian 421: 

• It is a supermassive black hole firing a jet of high-energy particles aimed directly at Earth.
• It is  about 400 million light-years away from the earth
• It is located in the constellation Ursa Major.
• Characteristics of supermassive black hole
  • They have a mass greater than about 50,000 times the mass of our sun.
  • These black holes are far too large to have formed from the gravitational collapse of a single star.
  • These are always found at the center of a galaxy and almost all galaxies have a supermassive black hole at its center. 
• Key facts about the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE)
  • It is an international collaboration between NASA and the Italian Space Agency.
  • It studies the most extreme and mysterious objects in the universe – supernova remnants, supermassive black holes, and dozens of other high-energy objects.
  • It is the first satellite dedicated to measuring polarized X-rays from objects, such as neutron stars and supermassive black holes, to reveal previously hidden details of the universe.

Q) What is black hole?

A black hole is a region in space where the gravitational pull is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape from it once it crosses a certain boundary called the event horizon. As a result, black holes are invisible to the naked eye and can only be detected indirectly by their effect on nearby matter and radiation.

Source: A supermassive black hole is firing high-energy particle jet towards Earth

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