The evolution of satellite galaxies is shaped by their constant interaction with the circumgalactic medium surrounding central galaxies, which in turn may be affected by gas and energy ejected from the central supermassive black hole^1,2,3,4,5,6. The nature of such a coupling between black holes and galaxies is, however, much debated^7,8,9 and observational evidence remains scarce^10,11. Here we report an analysis of archival data on 124,163 satellite galaxies in the potential wells of 29,631 dark matter halos with masses between 10¹² and 10¹⁴ solar masses. We find that quenched satellite galaxies are relatively less frequent along the minor axis of their central galaxies. This observation might appear counterintuitive given that black hole activity is expected to eject mass and energy preferentially in the direction of the minor axis of the host galaxy. We show, however, that the observed anisotropic signal results precisely from the ejective nature of black hole feedback in massive halos, as outflows powered by active galactic nuclei clear out the circumgalactic medium, reducing the ram pressure and thus preserving star formation in satellite galaxies. This interpretation is supported by the IllustrisTNG suite of cosmological numerical simulations, even though the model’s sub-grid implementation of black hole feedback is effectively isotropic¹².

卫星星系的演化是由它们与围绕中心星系的环银河介质不断相互作用而形成的，而这些介质又可能受到从中心超大质量黑洞^1,2,3,4,5,6喷出的气体和能量的影响。然而，黑洞和​​星系之间这种耦合的性质存在很大争议^7,8,9并且观测证据仍然稀缺^10,11。在这里，我们报告了对 29,631 个暗物质晕的潜在井中 124,163 个卫星星系的档案数据的分析，这些暗物质晕的质量在 10 ¹²和 10 ^14之间太阳质量。我们发现淬火的卫星星系在其中心星系的短轴上相对较少。考虑到黑洞活动预计会优先向宿主星系的短轴方向喷射质量和能量，这一观察结果可能看起来违反直觉。然而，我们表明，观察到的各向异性信号正是由大质量晕中黑洞反馈的喷射性质产生的，因为由活动星系核驱动的流出物清除了环银河介质，降低了撞击压力，从而保持了卫星星系中的恒星形成。这种解释得到了宇宙学数值模拟的 IllustrisTNG 套件的支持，即使该模型的黑洞反馈的子网格实现实际上是各向同性的¹²。