An active Seyfert Galaxy

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About 10% of all known galaxies fit into the class of Seyfert galaxies, named after Carl Seyfert, an astronomer who first studied these objects in 1943. These galaxies appear as normal spiral galaxies but have active cores with extremely high surface brightness and properties that are similar to those of quasars, another class of active yet brighter and more distant galaxies. Recent studies indicate that supermassive black holes reside at the center of these objects. Accretion disks surround the black holes, and the infalling plasma from the disks into the black holes determines the high level of activity and brightness in their cores. In some cases (designated as radio-loud Seyfert galaxies), jets of relativistic particles (like electrons) are launched by the active nuclei, producing synchrotron emission. A notable example is the Seyfert galaxy IC 5063, studied by Tadhunter et al. in 2014 and published in Nature 511 on page 440.\nCredit: INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo.