Free Astronomy Magazine January-February 2020

51 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2020 SPACE CHRONICLES just a billion years after the Big Bang. But how these extreme objects, whose masses are up to billions of times the mass of the Sun, had time to grow so fast, is an outstanding question among astronomers. A rtist impression of the heart of galaxy NGC 1068, which harbors an actively feeding supermassive black hole, hidden within a thick doughnut-shaped cloud of dust and gas. ALMA discovered two counter-rotating flows of gas around the black hole. The colors in this image represent the motion of the gas: blue is material moving toward us, red is moving away. [NRAO/AUI/NSF, S. Dagnello]