Free Astronomy Magazine May-June 2022

22 MAY-JUNE 2022 ASTRO PUBLISHING Supermassive black hole caught hiding in a ring of cosmic dust by ESO - Bárbara Ferreira T he left panel of this image shows a dazzling view of the active galaxy Messier 77 captured with the FOcal Reducer and low dispersion Spectrograph 2 (FORS2) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. The right panel shows a blow-up view of the very inner region of this galaxy, its active galactic nucleus, as seen with the MATISSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer. [ESO/Jaffe, Gámez-Rosas et al.] 77 that is hiding a supermassive black hole. The findings have con- firmed predictions made around 30 years ago and are giving as- tronomers new insight into “active galactic nuclei”, some of the bright- est and most enigmatic objects in the universe. Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are ex- tremely energetic sources powered T he European Southern Obser- vatory’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (ESO’s VLTI) has observed a cloud of cosmic dust at the centre of the galaxy Messier