An actively accreting massive black hole in the dwarf starburst galaxy Henize 2-10

Abstract

Supermassive black holes are now thought to lie at the heart of every giant galaxy with a spheroidal component, including our own Milky Way. The birth and growth of the first 'seed' black holes in the earlier Universe, however, is observationally unconstrained and we are only beginning to piece together a scenario for their subsequent evolution. Here we report that the nearby dwarf starburst galaxy Henize 2-10 contains a compact radio source at the dynamical centre of the galaxy that is spatially coincident with a hard X-ray source. From these observations, we conclude that Henize 2-10 harbours an actively accreting central black hole with a mass of approximately one million solar masses. This nearby dwarf galaxy, simultaneoulsy hosting a massive black hole and an extreme burst of star formation, is analogous in many ways to galaxies in the infant Universe during the early stages of black-hole growth and galaxy mass assembly. Our results confirm that nearby star-forming dwarf galaxies can indeed form massive black holes, and that by implication so can their primordial counterparts. Moreover, the lack of a substantial spheroidal component in Henize 2-10 indicates that supermassive black-hole growth may precede the build-up of galaxy spheroids.

Published in Nature. Advance Online Publication (AOP) on http://www.nature.com/nature

References in corpus (10)

• A New Sample of Low-mass Black Holes in Active Galaxies
• Simultaneous X-ray/optical/UV snapshots of active galactic nuclei from XMM-Newton: spectral energy distributions for the reverberation mapped sample
• Black Holes in Pseudobulges and Spheroidals: A Change in the Black Hole-Bulge Scaling Relations at Low Mass
• Chandra Multiwavelength Project X-ray Point Source Catalog
• Low-Mass Seyfert 2 Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Emerging Massive Star Clusters Revealed: High Resolution Imaging of NGC 4449 from the Radio to the Ultraviolet
• A New View of the Super Star Clusters in the Low-Metallicity Galaxy SBS 0335-052
• Brackett Lines from the Super Star Cluster Nebulae in He 2-10
• A VLBI Search for Radio Supernovae in Wolf Rayet Galaxies
• A First Estimate Of The X-Ray Binary Frequency As A Function Of Star Cluster Mass In A Single Galactic System

Cited by in corpus (75)

• The Host Galaxy and Redshift of the Repeating Fast Radio Burst FRB 121102
• The Repeating Fast Radio Burst FRB 121102 as Seen on Milliarcsecond Angular Scales
• Observational evidence for intermediate-mass black holes
• Unification of the Fundamental Plane and Super-Massive Black Holes Masses
• An Over-Massive Black Hole in the Compact Lenticular Galaxy NGC1277
• Off the Beaten Path: A New Approach to Realistically Model The Orbital Decay of Supermassive Black Holes in Galaxy Formation Simulations
• X-ray constraints on the local supermassive black hole occupation fraction
• Black Holes at the Centers of Nearby Dwarf Galaxies
• Black Hole Mass Scaling Relations for Early-Type Galaxies: $M_{BH}$-$M_{\ast ,sph}$ and $M_{BH}$-$M_{\ast ,gal}$
• The Fundamental Plane of Black Hole Accretion and its Use as a Black Hole-Mass Estimator
• X-ray and Ultraviolet Properties of AGN in Nearby Dwarf Galaxies
• A likely decade-long sustained tidal disruption event
• An X-ray Selected Sample of Candidate Black Holes in Dwarf Galaxies
• Illuminating Massive Black Holes With White Dwarfs: Orbital Dynamics and High Energy Transients from Tidal Interactions
• X-ray Detected AGN in SDSS Dwarf Galaxies
• Mid-Infrared Colors of Dwarf Galaxies: Young Starbursts Mimicking Active Galactic Nuclei
• Hunting for Massive Black Holes in Dwarf Galaxies
• A Candidate Massive Black Hole in the Low-metallicity Dwarf Galaxy Pair Mrk 709
• Observational Signatures of High-Redshift Quasars and Local Relics of Black Hole Seeds
• Orbital Decay of Supermassive Black Hole Binaries in Clumpy Multiphase Merger Remnants
• Henize 2-10: the ongoing formation of a nuclear star cluster around a massive black hole
• The Chandra Deep Fields: Lifting the Veil on Distant Active Galactic Nuclei and X-Ray Emitting Galaxies
• Extended Structure and Fate of the Nucleus in Henize 2-10
• Black hole triggered star formation in the dwarf galaxy Henize 2-10
• Deep Chandra Observations of the Compact Starburst Galaxy Henize 2-10: X-rays from the Massive Black Hole
• On the radio properties of the intermediate-mass black hole candidate ESO 243-49 HLX-1
• An Optically Obscured AGN in a Low Mass, Irregular Dwarf Galaxy: A Multi-Wavelength Analysis of J1329+3234
• A Multi-wavelength Study of the Turbulent Central Engine of the Low-mass AGN hosted by NGC404
• Inferring the HII region escape fraction of ionizing photons from infrared emission lines in metal-poor star-forming dwarf galaxies
• Hard X-ray selected AGNs in low-mass galaxies from the NuSTAR serendipitous survey
• RESOLVE and ECO: Finding Low-Metallicity $z\sim 0$ Dwarf AGN Candidates Using Optimized Emission-Line Diagnostics
• Highlights and Discoveries from the Chandra X-ray Observatory
• New Insights into the Physical Conditions and Internal Structure of a Candidate Proto-Globular Cluster
• Was 49b: An Overmassive AGN in a Merging Dwarf Galaxy?
• Deep Spectroscopy of the $M_V\sim -14.8$ Host Galaxy of a Tidal Disruption Flare in A1795
• A low upper mass limit for the central black hole in the late-type galaxy NGC 4414
• A Chandra and HST View of WISE-Selected AGN Candidates in Dwarf Galaxies
• A new sample of X-ray selected narrow emission-line galaxies. I. The nature of optically elusive AGN
• Implications of the pulsar timing array detections for massive black hole mergers in the LISA band
• Hubble Space Telescope Imaging of the Active Dwarf Galaxy RGG 118
• The MBHBM${}^{\star }$ Project -- II. Molecular Gas Kinematics in the Lenticular Galaxy NGC 3593 Reveal a Supermassive Black Hole
• The post-Herschel view of intrinsic AGN emission: constructing templates for galaxy and AGN emission at IR wavelengths
• Probing the Active Massive Black Hole Candidate in the Center of NGC 404 with VLBI
• Clumpy Star Formation and AGN Activity in Dwarf-Dwarf Galaxy Merger Mrk 709
• Ultramassive Black Hole Coalescence
• Resolving the X-ray emission from the Lyman continuum emitting galaxy Tol 1247-232
• The Diverse Morphologies and Structures of Dwarf Galaxies Hosting Optically-Selected Active Massive Black Holes
• X-ray spectroscopy of the candidate AGN in Henize 2-10 and NGC 4178: Likely supernova remnants
• Black hole mass measurement using molecular gas kinematics: what ALMA can do
• Multiwavelength Scrutiny of X-ray Sources in Dwarf Galaxies: ULXs versus AGN
• An X-ray Detection of Star Formation In a Highly Magnified Giant Arc
• Towards a More Complex Understanding of Natal Super Star Clusters with Multiwavelength Observations
• An Enhanced Massive Black Hole Occupation Fraction Predicted in Cluster Dwarf Galaxies
• Divergences in gravitational-wave emission and absorption from extreme mass ratio binaries
• Parameterizing the Outflow from a Central Black Hole in Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies: A 3D Hydrodynamic Simulation
• The viability of ultralight bosonic dark matter in dwarf galaxies
• Over-massive Central Black Holes in the Cosmological Simulations ASTRID and Illustris TNG50
• Black holes at cosmic dawn in the redshifted 21cm signal of HI
• Variable Hard X-ray Emission from the Candidate Accreting Black Hole in Dwarf Galaxy Henize 2-10
• The Luminosity and Stellar Mass Functions of Red W1-W2 Galaxies
• A Luminous X-ray Flare From The Nucleus of The Dormant Bulgeless Spiral Galaxy NGC 247
• Revealing the nature of the ULX and X-ray population of the spiral galaxy NGC 4088
• The metal-poor dwarf irregular galaxy candidate next to Mrk 1172
• The Noctua Suite of Simulations -- The Difficulty of Growing Massive Black Holes in Low-Mass Dwarf Galaxies
• Identification of Intermediate-mass Black Hole Candidates Among a Sample of Sd Galaxies
• Radio Scrutiny of the X-ray-Weak Tail of Low-Mass Active Galactic Nuclei: A Novel Signature of High-Eddington Accretion?
• Reconciling PTA and JWST and preparing for LISA with POMPOCO: a Parametrisation Of the Massive black hole POpulation for Comparison to Observations
• Reconstructing the LISA massive black hole binary population via iterative kernel density estimation
• Feedback from intermediate mass black holes on dwarf galaxy morphology at z=2
• A study of 1000 galaxies with unusually young and massive stars in the SDSS: a search for hidden black holes
• Wandering Black Hole Candidates in Dwarf Galaxies at VLBI Resolution
• The nature of the X-ray sources in dwarf galaxies in nearby clusters from the KIWICS
• Discriminating between different scenarios for the formation and evolution of massive black holes with LISA
• The black hole population in low-mass galaxies in large-scale cosmological simulations
• Revisiting the Gas Dynamics of Henize 2-10: Possible Drivers of the Starburst