Abstract
Black-hole accretion states near or above the Eddington luminosity (the point at which radiation force outwards overcomes gravity) are still poorly known because of the rarity of such sources. Ultraluminous X-ray sources1 are the most luminous class of black hole (LX ≈ 1040 erg s−1) located outside the nuclei of active galaxies. They are likely to be accreting at super-Eddington rates, if they are powered by black holes with masses less than 100 solar masses. They are often associated with shock-ionized nebulae2,3, though with no evidence of collimated jets. Microquasars with steady jets are much less luminous. Here we report that the large nebula S26 (ref. 4) in the nearby galaxy NGC 7793 is powered by a black hole with a pair of collimated jets. It is similar to the famous Galactic source SS433 (ref. 5), but twice as large and a few times more powerful. We determine a mechanical power of around a few 1040 erg s−1. The jets therefore seem 104 times more energetic than the X-ray emission from the core. S26 has the structure of a Fanaroff–Riley type II (FRII-type) active galaxy: X-ray and optical core, X-ray hot spots, radio lobes6 and an optical and X-ray cocoon. It is a microquasar where most of the jet power is dissipated in thermal particles in the lobes rather than relativistic electrons.
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Acknowledgements
This work was based on observations made with ESO telescopes at the Paranal Observatory under program 084.D-0881 (M.W.P.), and made use of the ESO/ST-ECF Science Archive facility, which is a joint collaboration of the ESO and the Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility. Data were obtained from the Chandra Data Archive and software was provided by the Chandra X-ray Center. R.S. acknowledges support from an Early-Career Leverhulme Fellowship and hospitality at the University of Sydney during part of this work.
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M.W.P. designed the study and analysed the optical spectroscopic observations. R.S. contributed the X-ray spectral analysis and the relative astrometric calibrations of the multiband datasets. C.M. carried out the reductions and analysis of the optical imaging data. All authors discussed the results and made substantial contributions to the manuscript.
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Pakull, M., Soria, R. & Motch, C. A 300-parsec-long jet-inflated bubble around a powerful microquasar in the galaxy NGC 7793. Nature 466, 209–212 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature09168
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature09168
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