Bursting onto the scene

摘要

The starburst in Henize 2-10, a relatively nearby blue compact dwarf galaxy, has attracted the attention of astronomers for decades, in part because of its prodigious rate of star formation. Now a study of Henize 2-10 at centimetre radio wavelengths and in the near-infrared reveals a compact radio source at its centre that is coincident with a hard X-ray source. This points to the presence of an actively accreting massive black hole, but not one that is associated with a bulge, a nuclear star cluster or any other well-defined nucleus. This means that Henize 2 -10 may reflect an early phase of black hole and galaxy evolution that has not been observed previously.