CaltechAUTHORS
Published February 26, 2026 | Version Supplemental material
Journal Article Open

A precessing jet from an active galactic nucleus drives gas outflow from a disk galaxy

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon University of California, Irvine
  • 2. ROR icon Infrared Processing and Analysis Center
  • 3. ROR icon National Radio Astronomy Observatory
  • 4. ROR icon University of Virginia
  • 5. ROR icon University of Arizona
  • 6. ROR icon European Southern Observatory
  • 7. ROR icon Atacama Large Millimeter Submillimeter Array
  • 8. ROR icon University of California, Riverside
  • 9. ROR icon University of Florida
  • 10. ROR icon FORTH Institute of Astrophysics
  • 11. ROR icon European University Cyprus
  • 12. Center for Computational Astrophysics, Flatiron Institute, New York, NY, USA.
  • 13. ROR icon University of California, Los Angeles
  • 14. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 15. ROR icon W.M. Keck Observatory
  • 16. ROR icon Carnegie Observatories
  • 17. ROR icon University of Toledo
  • 18. ROR icon Occidental College
  • 19. ROR icon University of California, Santa Cruz
  • 20. NPC Worldwide, Bloomington, IN, USA.
  • 21. ROR icon University of Crete
  • 22. ROR icon Australian National University
  • 23. ROR icon Australian Research Council
  • 24. ROR icon Hiroshima University
  • 25. ROR icon Space Telescope Science Institute
  • 26. ROR icon University of Hawaii at Manoa

Abstract

To reproduce observed galaxy properties, cosmological simulations require that massive galaxies experience feedback from active galactic nuclei, which regulates star formation within those galaxies. However, the energetics and timescales of these feedback processes are poorly constrained. We combined optical, infrared, submillimeter, and radio observations of the active galaxy VV 340a, which is hosting a low-power jet launched from a supermassive black hole at its center. We found that the jet undergoes precession, with a period of (8.2 ± 5.5) × 105 years, and drives an outflow of gas at a rate of 19.4 ± 7.9 solar masses per year. The jet shocks the gas, producing highly ionized plasma that extends several kiloparsecs from the nucleus. The outflow ejects sufficient gas from the galaxy to influence its star-formation rate.

Copyright and License

© 2026 the authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original US government works.

Acknowledgement

This work is based on observations made with the NASA/ESA/CSA JWST. The data were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST) at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy under NASA contract NAS 5-03127 for JWST. Some of the data were obtained at Keck Observatory, which is a private 501(c)3 nonprofit organization operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and NASA. The observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. This research made use of the Keck Observatory Archive (KOA), which is operated by the W. M. Keck Observatory and the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute (NExScI), under contract with NASA. The authors recognize and acknowledge the very important cultural role and reverence that the summit of Maunakea has always had within the Native Hawaiian community. We are most fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct observations from this mountain. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities. ALMA is a partnership of ESO (representing its member states), NSF (USA), and NINS (Japan), together with NRC (Canada), MOST and ASIAA (Taiwan), and KASI (Republic of Korea), in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. The Joint ALMA Observatory is operated by ESO, AUI/NRAO, and NAOJ. This research has made use of data obtained from the Chandra Data Archive provided by the Chandra X-ray Center (CXC). This work was performed in part at the Aspen Center for Physics, which is supported by National Science Foundation grant PHY-2210452.

Funding

J.A.K. and V.U acknowledge funding support from STScI programs JWST-GO-01717.001-A and HST-GO-17285.001-A, NASA Astrophysics Data Analysis Program (ADAP) grant 80NSSC20K0450, NASA Astrophysics Decadal Survey Precursor Science (ADSPS) grant 80NSSC25K0169, National Science Foundation (NSF) Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Grant (AAG) AST-2536603, and the Everglow Charitable Foundation. H.I. acknowledges support from JSPS KAKENHI grant JP21H01129 and the Ito Foundation for Promotion of Science. A.M.M. acknowledges support from the NASA Astrophysics Data Analysis Program (ADAP) grant 80NSSC23K0750, from NSF AAG grant 2009416 and NSF CAREER grant 2239807, and from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA) through the Cottrell Scholars Award CS-CSA-2024-092. T.G. acknowledges support from Australian Research Council Discovery Project DP210101945.

Data Availability

The JWST data are available at MAST (https://mast.stsci.edu/portal/Mashup/Clients/Mast/Portal.html) under proposal ID “01717.” The Keck data are available at the Keck Observatory Archive (https://koa.ipac.caltech.edu) under “more search options” with program ID “U213,” semester “2022A,” and principal investigator “U” (medium- and low-resolution data), and with program ID “E327” and target name “VV340a_center” (high-resolution data). The VLA data are available at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory Archive (https://data.nrao.edu/portal) under project codes “AL746” (6 GHz data) and “AC205” (1.5 GHz data). The ALMA data are available at the ALMA Science Archive (https://almascience.nrao.edu/aq) under project codes and target names “2017.1.01235.S,” “UGC 9618 N” and “2023.1.00499.S,” “VV340a.” The Chandra data are available in the Chandra X-ray Center Archive (https://cda.harvard.edu/chaser) under proposal number “08700551” and target name “VV 340a.” The HST observations are available at the Hubble Legacy Archive (https://hla.stsci.edu/hlaview.html) using advanced search with proposal ID “10592” and target “UGC09618NED02.” No physical materials were generated in this work.

Supplemental Material

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Additional details

Identifiers

PMID
41505246

Related works

Is new version of
Discussion Paper: arXiv:2601.08791 (arXiv)

Funding

National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NAS 5-03127
W. M. Keck Foundation
National Science Foundation
PHY-2210452
Space Telescope Science Institute
JWST-GO-01717.001-A
Space Telescope Science Institute
HST-GO-17285.001-A
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
80NSSC20K0450
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
80NSSC25K0169
National Science Foundation
AST-2536603
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
JP21H01129
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
80NSSC23K0750
National Science Foundation
2009416
National Science Foundation
2239807
Research Corporation for Science Advancement
CS-CSA-2024-092
Australian Research Council
DP210101945

Dates

Submitted
2024-04-17
Accepted
2025-11-05
Available
2026-01-08
Published online

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) , Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy (PMA) , Physics Department
Publication Status
Published