The Doomed Dust Disk of NGC 7052
What created the dust disk in the center of NGC 7052,
and what keeps it spinning?
Although the disk might appear as a relatively tame
"hubcap in space",
the unusual center of
elliptical galaxy
NGC 7052 is probably the remnant of a
titanic collision between galaxies.
What's more, the disk's spin indicates the
tremendous gravity of a massive central black hole. Analysis of this recently released photo by the
Hubble Space Telescope
indicates that the disk is thousands of light-years across,
rotates faster than 100 kilometers per second,
at a distance of 150 light-years from the center,
and contains more mass than a million Suns.
The theorized
central black hole is
thought to be yet 100 times more massive,
and may swallow the entire disk in the next few million years.