Tag Archive for 'Black hole'

An artist’s concept of the Gaia BH1 binary system. Image credit: International Gemini Observatory / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / J. da Silva / Spaceengine / M. Zamani.

Dormant Stellar-Mass Black Hole Detected 1,600 Light-Years Away

Nov 4, 2022 by News Staff

Gaia BH1 has a mass of 9.62 times the mass of the Sun and is orbited by a bright Sun-like star at about the same distance as our planet orbits the Sun....

An artist’s impression of an intermediate-mass black hole. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Modeling Study Sheds New Light on Quantum Properties of Black Holes

Oct 31, 2022 by Enrico de Lazaro

University of Queensland theoretical physicist Joshua Foo and his colleagues form the University of Queensland, Perimeter Institute and the University...

This image shows the location of the binary system Gaia DR3 4373465352415301632. Image credit: Sloan Digital Sky Survey / Chakrabart et al.

Astronomers Discover Stellar-Mass Black Hole 1,550 Light-Years Away

Oct 20, 2022 by Natali Anderson

The newly-discovered black hole resides in the binary system Gaia DR3 4373465352415301632 with a main-sequence star that is slightly smaller than the Sun....

This mosaic is composed of images covering the entire sky, taken by WISE as part of WISE’s 2012 All-Sky Data Release; by observing the entire sky, WISE can search for faint objects, like distant galaxies, or survey groups of cosmic objects. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA.

NEOWISE Mission Produces Time-Lapse Movie of Entire Sky

Oct 20, 2022 by News Staff

Using 18 all-sky maps produced by NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE), astronomers have created what is essentially...

This artist’s conception shows two supermassive black holes, similar to those observed by Bansal et al, orbiting one another more than 750 million light years from Earth. Image credit: Josh Valenzuela, University of New Mexico.

Astronomers Identify Peculiar Twisting Motion in Binary Black Hole System

Oct 18, 2022 by News Staff

This is the first time such an effect, known as precession, has been seen in black holes, where the twisting is 10 billion times faster than in previous...

Astronomers think GRB 221009A represents the birth of a new black hole formed within the heart of a collapsing star. In this illustration, the black hole drives powerful jets of particles traveling near the speed of light. The jets pierce through the star, emitting X-rays and gamma rays as they stream into space. Image credit: NASA / Swift / Cruz deWilde.

Astronomers Detect Record-Breaking Gamma-Ray Burst

Oct 16, 2022 by News Staff

GRB 221009A, a gamma-ray burst detected on October 9, 2022, is one of the nearest and possibly the most-energetic gamma-ray burst ever observed. It occurred...

This image, taken with Webb’s Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI), shows the barred spiral galaxy NGC 7469. Image credit: Bohn et al., arXiv: 2209.04466.

Webb Detects Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Nuclear Regions of Seyfert Galaxies

Oct 11, 2022 by News Staff

Astronomers have analyzed publicly available data from the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) on the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope for three Seyfert...

This image, taken by the X-SHOOTER instrument at ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), shows light from GRB 210905A (center). Image credit: ESO / Rossi et al.

Astronomers Detect Powerful Blast in Early Universe

Oct 3, 2022 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers using the X-SHOOTER instrument at ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have detected light from a gamma-ray burst at a redshift of 6.3, meaning...

This artist’s illustration indicates where the modeling of the ALMA data predicts the hot spot to be and its orbit around Sagittarius A*. Image credit: ESO / M. Kornmesser / M. Wielgus / Event Horizon Collaboration.

ALMA Spots Bubble of Hot Gas in Orbit around Milky Way’s Central Black Hole

Sep 22, 2022 by News Staff

Sagittarius A*, the 4.3-million-solar-mass black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, was observed with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter...

The main panel of this image shows a wide-field view of NGC 4424 in optical light from Hubble. The image is about 45,000 light-years wide. The inset features a close-up view of NGC 4424 that shows Chandra X-ray data (blue) plus a version of the optical data (red) that has had light from a model of NGC 4424 subtracted from the image to show other faint features. This inset image is about 1,700 light-years across. The Nikhuli star cluster is the elongated red object. Image credit: NASA / CXC / Swinburne University of Technology / Graham et al. / ESA / STScI.

Astronomers Witness ‘Black Hole Delivery System’ in Action

Aug 18, 2022 by Natali Anderson

A rare intermediate-mass black hole may have been delivered to the barred spiral galaxy NGC 4424 by another, smaller galaxy, according to an analysis of...

The emission from M87* has been resolved into a bright, thin ring (orange colormap), arising from the infinite sequence of additional images of the emission region, and the more diffuse primary image, produced by the photons that come directly toward Earth (in blue contours); when viewed at the imaging resolution of the Event Horizon Telescope, the two components blur together; however, by separately searching for the thin ring, it is possible to sharpen the view of M87*, isolating the fingerprint of strong gravity. Image credit: Broderick et al., doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/ac7c1d.

Astrophysicists Produce Image of Supermassive Black Hole’s Photon Ring

Aug 17, 2022 by News Staff

In April 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration released stunning images of M87*, a supermassive black hole in the center of Messier 87,...

This artist’s impression shows what the binary system VFTS 243 might look like if we were observing it up close. The system, which is located in the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud, is composed of a hot, blue star with 25 times the Sun’s mass and a black hole, which is at least nine times the mass of the Sun. The sizes of the two binary components are not to scale: in reality, the blue star is about 200,000 times larger than the black hole. Image credit: ESO / L. Calçada.

Dormant Stellar-Mass Black Hole Detected in Tarantula Nebula

Jul 18, 2022 by News Staff

The newly-detected black hole is a member of the binary system VFTS 243, which is located in the famous Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud. This...

This composite image of H1821+643 contains X-rays from Chandra (blue) that have been combined with radio data from NSF’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (red) and an optical image from the PanSTARRS telescope on Hawaii (white and yellow). Image credit: NASA / CXC / University of Cambridge / Sisk-Reynés et al. / NSF / NRAO / VLA / PanSTARRS.

Chandra Finds Slow-Rotating Supermassive Black Hole in Distant Quasar

Jul 1, 2022 by News Staff

A supermassive black hole in the center of H1821+643, a quasar about 3.4 billion light-years away from Earth, is rotating at about half the speed of light. This...

The star-filled sky in this Hubble photo lies in the direction of the Galactic center. The light from stars is monitored to see if any change in their apparent brightness is caused by a foreground object drifting in front of them. The warping of space by the interloper would momentarily brighten the appearance of a background star, an effect called gravitational lensing. One such event, OB110462, is shown in the four close-up frames at the bottom. The arrow points to a star that momentarily brightened, as first captured by Hubble in August 2011. This was caused by a foreground black hole drifting in front of the star, along our line of sight. The star brightened and then subsequently faded back to its normal brightness as the black hole passed by. Because a black hole doesn’t emit or reflect light, it cannot be directly observed. But its unique thumbprint on the fabric of space can be measured through these so-called microlensing events. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / K. Sahu, STScI / J. DePasquale, STScI.

Hubble Detects Free-Floating Compact Object 5,000 Light-Years Away

Jun 13, 2022 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers have for the first time discovered what may be an isolated stellar-mass black hole using the astrometric microlensing technique. They estimate...

Growing, massive black holes reside in dwarf galaxies, where their radiation competes with the light of abundant young stars. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / M. Polimera.

Growing Massive Black Holes More Common in Dwarf Galaxies than Previously Thought

May 24, 2022 by News Staff

Using data from the REsolved Spectroscopy Of a Local VolumE (RESOLVE) and the Environmental COntext Catalog (ECO) surveys, astronomers have found evidence...

This is the first image of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. Image credit: EHT Collaboration.

Astronomers Capture First Image of Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole

May 12, 2022 by News Staff

The new image produced by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration shows the area close to the event horizon of Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the 4.3-million-solar-mass...

In this simulation of a supermassive black hole merger, the blue-shifted black hole closest to the viewer amplifies the red-shifted black hole in the back through gravitational lensing. Davelaar & Haiman discovered a distinct dip in brightness when the closest black hole passed in front of the shadow of its counterpart, an observation that could be used to measure the size of both black holes and test alternative theories of gravity. Image credit: Jordy Davelaar.

Scientists Develop Method to Image Shadows Cast by Black Hole Binaries

May 10, 2022 by News Staff

In April 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration released stunning images of M87*, a 6.5-billion-solar-mass black hole in the center of the...

An artist’s impression of a black hole X-ray binary. Image credit: Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias.

NICER Detects Echoes from Eight Black Hole X-Ray Binaries

May 2, 2022 by News Staff

As a stellar-mass black hole pulls in gas and dust from an orbiting star, it can give off spectacular bursts of X-rays that bounce and echo off the inspiraling...

The four galaxies shown in this graphic are among 29 galaxies in the sample that showed evidence for growing black holes near their centers. X-rays from Chandra (blue) have been overlaid on optical images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of the galaxies NGC 1385, NGC 1566, NGC 3344, and NGC 6503. The boxes that appear in the roll-over outline the location of the burgeoning black holes. Image credit: NASA / CXC / Washington State University / Baldassare et al. / ESA / STScI.

Massive Black Holes Form in Dense Stellar Environments, Study Suggests

Apr 21, 2022 by News Staff

Black holes are demolishing thousands of stars in a quest to pack on weight, according to an analysis of images of 108 galaxies taken by NASA’s Chandra...

An artist’s impression of a supermassive black hole that is inside the dust-shrouded core of a starburst galaxy. Image credit: NASA / ESA / N. Bartmann.

Hubble Finds Rapidly Growing Black Hole in Early Universe

Apr 13, 2022 by News Staff

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have spotted GNz7q, a black hole that existed only 750 million years after the Big Bang, in one of...

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