Tag Archive for 'Black hole'

An artist’s impression of the accreting black hole LID-568 in the early Universe. Image credit: NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / J. da Silva / M. Zamani.

Astronomers Spot Early Universe’s Fastest-Feeding Black Hole

Nov 4, 2024 by News Staff

Named LID-568, this 7.2-million-solar-mass black hole appears to be feeding on matter at a rate 40 times its Eddington limit and is seen as it existed...

A view of the accretion disk around the supermassive black hole, with jet-like structures flowing away from the disk. The extreme mass of the black hole bends spacetime, allowing the far side of the accretion disc to be seen as an image above and below the black hole. Image credit: Science Communication Lab, DESY.

DESI Searching for Evidence of Dark Energy from Black Holes

Oct 28, 2024 by News Staff

According to the prevailing inflationary universe theory, at the very beginning of the Big Bang, a mysterious energy drove an exponential expansion of...

An artist’s impression of V404 Cygni: the central black hole (black dot) is in the process of consuming a nearby star (orange body at left), while a second star (upper white flash) orbits at a much farther distance. Image credit: Jorge Lugo.

Black Hole-Hosting Binary V404 Cygni is Actually Part of Triple System, Astrophysicists Say

Oct 24, 2024 by News Staff

The well-studied V404 Cygni, an X-ray binary hosting a low-mass black hole, is part of a wide hierarchical triple with a tertiary companion at least 3,500...

Siraj & Loeb explore the possibility that accretion flares resulting from the tidal disruption of small Oort Cloud bodies by a putative primordial black hole could power an observable optical signal that could be searched for with the upcoming Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time. Image credit: Sci-News.com / Zdeněk Bardon / ESO.

Primordial Black Holes Could Be Detected Thanks to Their Influence on Solar System Planets

Sep 18, 2024 by News Staff

Primordial black holes are one of the strongest candidates for the Universe’s dark matter. In this scenario, their abundance would be large enough for...

GS-10578 represents a unique opportunity to study how the most massive galaxies in the Universe became -- and stayed -- quiescent. Image credit: Francesco D’Eugenio.

Supermassive Black Holes Can Starve Their Host Galaxies of Star-Forming Gas, Research Confirms

Sep 17, 2024 by News Staff

Astrononomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have detected that GS-10578, a massive, quiescent galaxy at redshift of 3.064 (look-back...

An artist’s impression of HSC J121503.42-014858.7 and HSC J121503.55-014859.3 quasars. Image credit: Izumi et al., doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/ad57c6.

Astronomers Discover Spectacular Galactic Merger in Early Universe

Sep 2, 2024 by News Staff

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Subaru Telescope, astronomers have discovered a pair of merging gas-rich galaxies...

This artist’s impression shows the locations of multiple radio observatories across the planet, which participated in a pilot experiment conducted by the EHT Collaboration that obtained the highest-resolution observations from the ground. Image credit: ESO / M. Kornmesser.

EHT Makes Highest-Resolution Black Hole Detections Yet from Earth

Aug 27, 2024 by News Staff

Astrophysicists with the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration have conducted test observations achieving the highest resolution ever obtained from...

This artist’s conception shows the galaxy merger and its two central black holes. Image credit: ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / M. Weiss, NRAO, AUI & NSF.

Astrophysicists May Have Solved ‘Final Parsec Problem’ of Supermassive Black Hole Mergers

Jul 23, 2024 by News Staff

New calculations reveal that pairs of supermassive black holes can merge into a larger black hole because of previously overlooked behavior of dark matter...

Intermediate-Mass Black Hole Detected Close to Milky Way’s Center

Jul 18, 2024 by Natali Anderson

Using data from ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and other telescopes, astronomers have found evidence for an intermediate-mass black hole in IRS 13,...

Omega Centauri is about 10 times as massive as other big globular clusters. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Maximilian Häberle, MPIA.

Astronomers Find Intermediate-Mass Black Hole in Milky Way’s Most Massive Globular Cluster

Jul 10, 2024 by News Staff

Using more than 500 images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, astronomer have found evidence for a 20,000-solar-mass black hole at the center of...

$This Webb image shows the RX J1131-1231 galaxy distorted by gravitational lensing into a dim ring; at the top of the ring are three very bright spots with diffraction spikes coming off them, right next to each other; these are copies of a single quasar in the lensed galaxy, duplicated by the gravitational lens; in the center of the ring, the elliptical galaxy doing the lensing appears as a small blue dot. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / Webb / A. Nierenberg.$

Webb Sees Four Images of Same Gravitationally Lensed Quasar

Jul 8, 2024 by News Staff

A quasar called RX J1131-1231 resides approximately 6 billion light-years away in the constellation of Crater. This Webb image shows the RX J1131-1231...

Halo around Cygnus X-3. Image credit: NASA.

IXPE Discovers New Ultra-Luminous X-ray Source in Milky Way

Jun 25, 2024 by News Staff

Cygnus X-3, an X-ray binary system located some 7,400 parsecs (24,136 light-years) in the constellation of Cygnus, represents a class of ultra-luminous...

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...

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