Supermassive black holes in active galaxies show accretion states similar to those seen in stellar-mass black holes in our galaxy (IMAGE)

Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC)

Supermassive black holes in active galaxies show accretion states similar to those seen in stellar-mass black holes in our galaxy

Caption

The figure illustrates how the population of active Seyfert-1 galaxies is typically dominated by the emission of the accretion disk ('soft' state), while the population of LINERs is much less luminous and is dominated by jets ('hard' state), which emit intensely in radio waves. The Seyfert-2 galaxies, on the other hand, do not show a homogeneous behaviour and while a good part behave in a similar way to the Seyfert-1, a large group of them are located in intermediate states. The latter are also observed in stellar black holes for short periods of time.

Credit

Teo Muñoz Darias/Juan A. Fernández Ontiveros

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