About Markarian 421:
- It is a supermassive black hole firing a jet of high-energy particles aimed directly at Earth.
- It is about 400 million light-years away from the earth
- It is located in the constellation Ursa Major.
Characteristics of supermassive black hole
- They have a mass greater than about 50,000 times the mass of our sun.
- These black holes are far too large to have formed from the gravitational collapse of a single star.
- These are always found at the centre of a galaxy and almost all galaxies have a supermassive black hole at its centre.
Key facts about the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE)
- It is an international collaboration between NASA and the Italian Space Agency.
- It studies the most extreme and mysterious objects in the universe – supernova remnants, supermassive black holes, and dozens of other high-energy objects.
- It is the first satellite dedicated to measuring polarized X-rays from objects, such as neutron stars and supermassive black holes, to reveal previously hidden details of the universe.
