Tag Archive for 'Black hole'

This artist’s impression shows the growing disk of material being pulled in by the black hole as it feeds on the gas available in its surroundings, making the galaxy light up. Image credit: ESO / M. Kornmesser.

Astronomers Witness Awakening of Supermassive Black Hole

Jun 18, 2024 by News Staff

In December 2019, SDSS 1335+0728 — a little-known galaxy located 300 million light-years away in the constellation of Virgo — suddenly started...

A simulation of a hypothetical J1249+36-white dwarf binary pair ends with the white dwarf exploding into a supernova. Image credit: Adam Makarenko / W.M. Keck Observatory.

Citizen Scientists Discover Hypervelocity L-Subdwarf Star in Solar Neighborhood

Jun 12, 2024 by News Staff

With an estimated distance of 140 parsecs (457 light-years), the L-subdwarf star CWISE J124909+362116.0 (J1249+36 for short) has a total speed of at least...

This image shows a region near the center of our Milky Way Galaxy in X-ray and radio light. At the bottom of the image, near the center, is a brilliant, tangled knot of material that resembles a paint splatter. This is the brightest region in the image, and it contains the supermassive black hole at the center of our Galaxy, known as Sagittarius A*. The lower third of the image resembles an angry firestorm. Streaks of red and orange are scattered in every direction, as if a legion of embers from a fire crackled and popped into the air all at once. Flame-like structures lick toward the center from our right. Much of the image is infused with wispy blue clouds showing X-rays detected by Chandra. At a few points, the wispy blue clouds seem to form into balls of teal colored light and are known as dust halos. They are caused by X-rays from bright X-ray sources reflecting off dust surrounding the sources. These dust halos resemble underwater lights glowing in a cloudy swimming pool at night. Rising up from Sagittarius A* in the center of the image is a pillar of blue light referred to as a chimney. This chimney of hot gas is surrounded by red clouds that are filled with stars, presenting themselves as tiny red flecks. Near the top of the blue pillar is a streak of light blue, outlined by an illustrated, gray box. This streak is referred to as the chimney exhaust vent. Just to our left is another illustrated box that shows the close-up image of the chimney vent as observed by Chandra. Image credit: NASA / CXC / Universe of Chicago / Mackey et al. / NRF / SARAO / MeerKAT / SAO / N. Wolk.

Milky Way’s Center is Venting, Astronomers Say

May 17, 2024 by News Staff

Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have discovered an ‘exhaust vent’ funneling hot gas away from Sagittarius A*, the supermassive...

The NASA visualization tracks a camera as it approaches, briefly orbits, and then crosses the event horizon -- the point of no return -- of a supersized black hole similar in mass to the one at the center of our Galaxy. Image credit: J. Schnittman & B. Powell, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

New NASA Visualization Shows Supermassive Black Hole’s Event Horizon

May 9, 2024 by News Staff

Thanks to a new visualization produced on a NASA supercomputer, you can plunge into the event horizon, a black hole’s point of no return. “People...

This artist’s concept shows the possible locations of iron revealed in XRISM’s X-ray spectrum of NGC 4151. Image credit: Conceptual Image Lab, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

XRISM Detects Iron in Accretion Disk around NGC 4151’s Supermassive Black Hole

May 8, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

NGC 4151 is a spiral galaxy located some 62 million light-years away in the northern constellation of Canes Venatici. This artist’s concept shows the...

The location of the first three black holes discovered by ESA’s Gaia mission in the Milky Way. Image credit: ESA / Gaia / DPAC.

Surprisingly Massive Stellar-Mass Black Hole Detected in Nearby Binary System

Apr 16, 2024 by Natali Anderson

Using data from ESA’s Gaia mission, astronomers have discovered a nearby binary system composed of a giant star orbiting a dormant black hole of of stellar...

This image from the Event Horizon Telescope shows the polarized view of Sagittarius A*; the lines overlaid on this image mark the orientation of polarization, which is related to the magnetic field around the shadow of the black hole. Image credit: EHT Collaboration.

Event Horizon Telescope Observes Twisted Magnetic Field around Milky Way’s Central Black Hole

Mar 27, 2024 by News Staff

According to astronomers’ best models of black hole evolution, the magnetic fields in the accretion disk need to be strong enough to push the accreting...

This two-part graphic shows evidence of a gaseous clump of helium in the halo surrounding galaxy GN-z11. In the top portion, at the far right, a small box identifies GN-z11 in a field of galaxies. The middle box shows a zoomed-in image of the galaxy. The box at the far left displays a map of the helium gas in the halo of GN-z11, including a clump that does not appear in the infrared colors shown in the middle panel. In the lower half of the graphic, a spectrum shows the distinct ‘fingerprint’ of helium in the halo. The full spectrum shows no evidence of other elements and so suggests that the helium clump must be fairly pristine, made of hydrogen and helium gas left over from the big bang, without much contamination from heavier elements produced by stars. Theory and simulations in the vicinity of particularly massive galaxies from these epochs predict that there should be pockets of pristine gas surviving in the halo, and these may collapse and form Population III star clusters. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / Ralf Crawford, STScI.

Webb Detects Pristine Helium Clump in GN-z11’s Halo

Mar 5, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

GN-z11 is an exceptionally luminous galaxy that existed when our Universe was only 420 million years old, making it one of the earliest and most distant...

An artist’s impression of a supermassive black hole binary in the elliptical galaxy B2 0402+379. Image credit: NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / J. daSilva / M. Zamani.

Astronomers Measure Heaviest Pair of Supermassive Black Holes Ever Found

Mar 1, 2024 by News Staff

Astronomers using archival data from the Gemini North telescope have measured a binary supermassive black hole located within the elliptical galaxy B2...

Composite-color image of A2744-QSO1. Image credit: Furtak et al., doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07184-8.

Webb Finds Surprisingly Massive Black Hole in Early Universe

Feb 27, 2024 by News Staff

Using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have observed an extremely red, quasar-like object — named A2744-QSO1 — behind...

Multiwavelength image of the massive galaxy cluster SDSS J1531+3414. Image credit: NASA / CXC / SAO / Omoruyi et al. / STScI / Tremblay et al. / ASTRON / LOFAR / NASA / CXC / SAO / N. Wolk.

Astronomers Detect Mega-Eruption from Supermassive Black Hole in Distant Galaxy Cluster

Feb 22, 2024 by News Staff

Some of the gas sent gas away from the supermassive black hole — which is located in the center of the galaxy cluster SDSS J1531+3414 (SDSS J1531...

This image of the exceptional quasar J0529-4351 is from the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey DR10; a neighboring M star appears in red. Image credit: Wolf et al., doi: 10.1038/s41550-024-02195-x.

Astronomers Discover Most Luminous Quasar Ever Observed

Feb 21, 2024 by Sergio Prostak

The black hole in the newly-discovered quasar SMSS J052915.80-435152.0 (hereafter called J0529-4351) accretes around one solar mass per day onto an existing...

An artist’s conception of the clouds flowing out from the center of the Milky Way, entrained in a very hot wind that has accelerated them to velocities of many hundreds of km per second. Image credit: NSF / GBO / P. Vosteen.

Astronomers Spot Hundreds of Massive Gas Clouds Escaping Milky Way’s Center

Feb 20, 2024 by News Staff

Using new 21-cm radio observations made with NSF’s Green Bank Telescope, astronomers have discovered over 250 neutral gaseous clouds being blasted out...

Daly et al. found Sagittarius A* is spinning with 60% of the maximum possible rate of spin, a limit set by material not being able to travel faster than the speed of light. This image shows Sagittarius A* in X-ray light from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. Image credit: NASA / CXC / University of Wisconsin / Bai et al.

Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole is Spinning Very Rapidly, New Research Shows

Feb 12, 2024 by News Staff

Sagittarius A*, the 4.3-million-solar-mass black hole that resides at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, is spinning so quickly it is warping the spacetime...

This artist’s impression shows the evolution of the Universe beginning with the Big Bang on the left followed by the appearance of the Cosmic Microwave Background. The formation of the first stars ends the cosmic dark ages, followed by the formation of galaxies. Image credit: M. Weiss / Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Which Came First: Supermassive Black Holes or Galaxies? New Insights from Webb

Feb 6, 2024 by News Staff

New insights from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope upend theories of how black holes shape the cosmos, challenging classical understanding that...

This artist impression shows ultra-fast winds blasting out from the center of galaxy Markarian 817. These winds, moving at many millions of km per hour, clear out interstellar gas from a vast region of space. Without this gas, the galaxy can’t form new stars and the black hole in the galactic center has little left to eat. The inset shows what is happening at galaxy’s heart. A supermassive black hole draws in gas from its surroundings, which forms a hot, brightly lit accretion disk (orange). The cause of the winds (white) is magnetic fields within the disk, which fling particles out in all directions at incredibly high speeds. These winds effectively block out X-rays (blue) which are sent out by the extremely hot plasma surrounding the black hole, called the corona. Zak et al. caught Markarian 817 blasting out ultra-fast winds using ESA’s X-ray telescope XMM-Newton. Lasting for around a year, the winds will have significantly affected star formation in the galaxy. The fact that the black hole at the center of the galaxy was showing rather average activity levels before producing the winds suggests that ultra-fast black hole winds are much more common than previously thought. In other words, black holes and their host galaxies strongly affect each other’s evolution. Image credit: ESA / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

XMM-Newton Detects Ultra-Fast Black Hole Wind in Markarian 817

Feb 1, 2024 by News Staff

Markarian 817 is a Seyfert 1 galaxy located 430 million light-years away in the constellation of Draco. Also known as Mrk 817 or QSO J1436+5847, it hosts...

Masterson et al. identified 18 new tidal disruption events -- extreme instances when a nearby star is tidally drawn into a black hole and ripped to shreds. Image credit: Masterson et al., doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/ad18bb.

Astronomers Discover 18 New Tidal Disruption Events

Jan 30, 2024 by News Staff

A tidal disruption event occurs when a star winds up so close to a supermassive black hole that the tidal forces exceed the star’s self-gravity and shred...

The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration released new images of M87* from observations taken in April 2018, one year after the first observations in April 2017. The new observations reveal a familiar, bright ring of emission, the same size as as first observed. The brightest part of the ring has shifted by about 30º, to a 5 o’clock position, relative to the 2017 image. Image credit: EHT Collaboration.

New Observations of Messier 87’s Black Hole Support Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity

Jan 23, 2024 by News Staff

In April 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration reported the first-ever event-horizon-scale images of a black hole, resolving the central...

GN-z11. Image credit: NASA / ESA / P. Oesch, Yale University / G. Brammer, STScI / P. van Dokkum, Yale University / G. Illingworth, University of California, Santa Cruz.

Webb Detects Oldest Black Hole Yet Known

Jan 18, 2024 by News Staff

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have detected a small and vigorous black hole in GN-z11, an exceptionally luminous galaxy...

Paduano et al. identified a new radio source (white square) in the center of 47 Tucanae (red circle). Image credit: Paduano et al., doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/ad0e68.

ATCA Detects Compact Radio Source in Center of 47 Tucanae

Jan 17, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers using CSIRO’s Australia Telescope Compact Array have captured the most detailed radio image ever seen of 47 Tucanae, the second brightest...

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