The Hubble telescope has spotted a 500-light-year-long “umbilical cord” for baby stars made of gas and dust. The supermassive black hole, situated roughly 34 million light-years away in the galaxy Henize 2-10, was seen spewing an enormous jet of ionized gas from its center at around 1 million mph feeding a “firestorm” of new star formation in a nearby stellar nursery.
The discovery, made using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, is the first time a black hole in a dwarf galaxy (a galaxy with 1 billion or fewer stars) has been seen birthing stars. The finding was first published Jan. 19 in the journal Nature.