Astronomers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have spotted what appear to be two supermassive black holes at the heart of a remote galaxy, circling each other like dance partners. The incredibly rare sighting was made with the help of NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE.

“We think the jet of one black hole is being wiggled by the other, like a dance with ribbons,” said Chao-Wei Tsai of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

Follow-up observations with the Australian Telescope Compact Array near Narrabri, Australia, and the Gemini South telescope in Chile, revealed unusual features in the galaxy, including a lumpy jet thought to be the result of one black hole causing the jet of the other to sway.

The findings could teach astronomers more about how supermassive black holes grow by merging with each other.

The new study took advantage of previously released all-sky WISE satelite data. Astronomers sifted through images of millions of actively feeding supermassive black holes spread throughout our sky before an oddball, also known as WISE J233237.05-505643.5, jumped out.

“At first we thought this galaxy’s unusual properties seen by WISE might mean it was forming new stars at a furious rate,” said Peter Eisenhardt, WISE project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and a co-author of the study. “But on closer inspection, it looks more like the death spiral of merging giant black holes.”

The dance of these black hole duos starts out slowly, with the objects circling each other at a distance of about a few thousand light-years. So far, only a few handfuls of supermassive black holes have been conclusively identified in this early phase of merging.

The final stage of merging black holes is predicted to send gravitational waves rippling through space and time. Researchers are actively searching for these waves using arrays of dead stars called pulsars in hopes of learning more about the veiled black hole dancers.

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