A supermassive black hole at the core of a distant galaxy is hiding in a cloak of its own making.

Supermassive black holes are shrouded by doughnut-shaped rings of gas and dust, but scientists are not sure where these come from. A team led by Jack Gallimore of Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile to observe galaxy NGC 1068, 14.4 million parsecs (47 million light years) away. They saw hot, ionized clouds of carbon monoxide gas flying away from the galaxy's black hole in opposite directions.

This suggests that the gas originates from the disk of material swirling around the black hole and is flung off by its spinning magnetic field. The findings could alter theories of how black holes interact with their host galaxies.

Astrophys. J. 829, L7 (2016)