Black hole triggered star formation in the dwarf galaxy Henize 2-10
  Black hole driven outflows have been observed in some dwarf galaxies with
active galactic nuclei (1), and likely play a role in heating and expelling gas
(thereby suppressing star formation), as they do in larger galaxies (2). The
extent to which black hole outflows can trigger star formation in dwarf
galaxies is unclear, because work in this area has hitherto focused on massive
galaxies and the observational evidence is scarce (3,4,5). Henize 2-10 is a
dwarf starburst galaxy previously reported to have a central massive black hole
(6,7,8,9), though that interpretation has been disputed since some aspects of
the observational evidence are also consistent with a supernova remnant
(10,11). At a distance of ~9 Mpc, it presents an opportunity to resolve the
central region and determine if there is evidence for a black hole outflow
impacting star formation. Here we report optical observations of Henize 2-10
with a linear resolution of a few parsecs. We find a ~150 pc long ionized
filament connecting the region of the black hole with a site of recent star
formation. Spectroscopy reveals a sinusoid-like position-velocity structure
that is well described by a simple precessing bipolar outflow. We conclude that
this black hole outflow triggered the star formation.
