The Crepuscular Rays of Galaxy IC 5063 in Indus | Hubble

The Crepuscular Rays of Galaxy IC 5063 in Indus | Hubble

Many of the most stunning views of our sky occur at sunset, when sunlight pierces the clouds, creating a mixture of bright and dark rays formed by the clouds’ shadows and the beams of light scattered by the Earth's atmosphere. These are called crepuscular rays. Astronomers studying the nearby galaxy IC 5063 are tantalized by a similar effect in this image from the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope. Here, a collection of narrow bright rays and dark shadows is seen beaming out of the blazingly bright center of the active galaxy, shooting across at least 36,000 light-years. IC 5063 resides 156 million light-years from Earth.

Astronomers have traced the rays back to the galaxy’s core, the location of an active supermassive black hole. The black hole is feeding on infalling material, producing a powerful gusher of light from superheated gas near it. Although the researchers have developed several plausible theories for the lightshow, the most intriguing idea suggests that the shadows are being cast into space by an inner tube-shaped ring, or torus, of dusty material surrounding the black hole.

Image Processor Judy Schmidt: "Revisiting our old friend IC 5063, this time with a bit of color, clearly revealing the emission line features emerging nearly perpendicular from the crepuscular rays. These features, in cyan, are most easily viewed zoomed in on the nucleus. They are thought to be formed by the actively accreting supermassive black hole in the center of the galaxy. In this case, the black hole may have a dark 'donut' of dust around its equatorial axis, and the extremely bright light creates ionizing cones and jets of material out of the polar axis."

"The processing here is not only extreme, but also a combination of data from two separate HST snapshot proposals, and the wondrous Legacy Survey DR9 release. I used my hacky Photoshop subtraction model to clearly reveal the center of the galaxy in the Hubble data, while the outer parts are partially filled using the LS DR9 imagery, more smoothly and confidently illustrating the galaxy's outer tidal structures."

Credit: NASA/European Space Agency (ESA)/Aaron Barth/Julianne Dalcanton/DECaM Legacy Survey

Image Processing: Judy Schmidt
Release Date: Aug. 27, 2021

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