The Hubble Space Telescope has once again delivered extraordinary images from the distant corners of the universe. This time, its subject of observation was the galaxy IC 4709, located 240 million light-years away in the constellation Microscopium.

Strange Universe Like a parasite sucking the life force out of its host, an international group of scientists have determined that a supermassive black hole is starving a galaxy of essential materials to make new stars.

"The [energy released from gas falling into the] the supermassive black hole is removing large amounts of gas very fast from the galaxy," D'Eugenio explained. "Without this gas, no new stars can be formed, so this galaxy is losing the `shine' of young and bright stars, and has already started it's long history of fading."

The mass of gas being ejected from the galaxy is more than what’s needed to keep forming new stars. Essentially, the black hole is causing the galaxy to run out of gas and stop star formation, leading to its “starvation” and eventual death.

"If there are lots of black holes out there, some of them must surely pass through our backyard every now and then."