Ultra-fast wind warning in spiral galaxy NGC 3783

Dr Emily Baldwin

Hold onto your hats as a monster of a black hole out in spiral galaxy NGC 3783 has whipped up powerful winds of 57,000 kilometres per second in just a matter of hours! It is an absolutely unprecedented observation. As far as our records go back, we have never before witnessed a black hole create such eye-watering winds in such a short timeframe. This black hole is a monster, equivalent to 30 million of our own Suns, and it lurks out in NGC 3783, a bright barred spiral galaxy about 130 million light years from Earth.

Give it an extremely wide berth; it is well known to devour any nearby material lying in its path without a second thought. Its insatiable appetite ensures it always has a swirling ‘doughnut’ of extremely hot, magnetised plasma whirling closely around it, that will eventually be sucked in by its colossal gravity. This endless feasting powers its host galaxy’s dazzling active galactic nucleus at its core, and it occasionally burps out powerful jets and winds far and wide.

Earlier today we received an alert for an unusually bright X-ray flare. We have pinpointed it to a hotspot of superheated material where we expect that tangled magnetic field lines suddenly untwisted, creating a solar flare-like event but on an unimaginably large scale.

Now that the peak X-ray emission is subsiding, we are seeing a rise in ultraviolet radiation, and at the same time, an intense outflow of high-speed winds shooting out into the vicinity. At close to 20 per cent of the speed of light, this is fast enough for some material to escape from the black hole’s immediate grasp! Depending on your exact location and the density of your local gas cloud, you may experience imminent shock heating, compression, or a decrease in gas levels as the wind blasts through, leading to sudden changes in density and temperature. Longer term, if the wind has swept away your gas supply you will notice a suppression of star formation.

Conversely, if the wind slammed into denser clouds, this may shock-trigger gravitational collapse, so stand by for a flurry of new stars forming in the neighbourhood.

Our climate models suggest that severe winds will sweep the region for the next three days. Additional high-speed outflows up to several thousand kilometres per second – along with associated shocks and turbulence – may also be possible. Later in the week, conditions will calm down, with wind speeds at a much more manageable 500–1,500 km/s.

Regular peaks and troughs in this black hole’s activity levels are to be expected and perfectly normal, but remain cautious, as extreme events like today’s may arise again with little warning.

Dr Emily Baldwin is Astronomy Now’s Digital Content Manager.

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This weather report was inspired by observations made by the JAXA-led XRISM and ESA’s XMM-Newton space telescopes, reported in the December 2025 paper Delving into the depths of NGC 3783 with XRISM: III. Birth of an ultrafast outflow during a soft flare by Liyi Gu et al. published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.