Tag Archive for 'Black hole'

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...

Quantum scrambling is one suggestion for how information can fall into a black hole and come out as random-looking radiation. Perhaps, the argument goes, it is not random at all, and black holes are just excellent scramblers. Image credit: E. Edwards / Joint Quantum Institute.

Hairy Black Holes Explain Hawking’s Paradox, Physicists Claim

Mar 22, 2022 by News Staff

The signature feature of black holes is that they are black — objects which fall into the hole can no longer be seen and can no longer influence...

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.

Early Universe Experienced Phase Transition that Created Supermassive Black Holes, Study Suggests

Mar 15, 2022 by News Staff

The formation of ultrarare supermassive black holes, with masses over one billion solar masses, in the first billion years of the Universe is an open question...

Blázquez-Salcedo et al. constructed a specific example of a class of traversable wormholes in four space-time dimensions. Image credit: NASA / G. Bacon, STScI.

New Theoretical Study Sheds Light on How Information Escapes from Evaporating Black Hole

Mar 11, 2022 by News Staff

An international team of physicists from RIKEN, Cornell University and the University of California, Santa Barbara, has used a new spacetime geometry with...

An artist’s impression of HR 6819, a close binary consisting of a stripped B-type star (background) and a rapidly rotating Be star (foreground). Image credit: ESO / L. Calçada.

HR 6819 is Binary System with No Black Hole, Astronomers Say

Mar 4, 2022 by News Staff

HR 6819, a highly intriguing object that was recently proposed as a multiple system containing a stellar-mass black hole, is in fact a binary star system...

This images from the MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope shows the Seyfert 2 galaxy NGC 7582. Image credit: ESO / Juneau et al.

Galaxy Substructure Plays Important Role in How Active Black Holes Affect Their Galaxies: Study

Feb 9, 2022 by Enrico de Lazaro

Using images from the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have studied the effect of...

A pullout of the central region of the dwarf starburst galaxy Henize 2-10 traces an outflow, or bridge of hot gas 230 light-years long, connecting the galaxy’s massive black hole and a star-forming region. Hubble data on the velocity of the outflow from the black hole, as well as the age of the young stars, indicates a causal relationship between the two. A few million years ago, the outflow of hot gas slammed into the dense cloud of a stellar nursery and spread out, like water from a hose impacting a mound of dirt. Now clusters of young stars are aligned perpendicular to the outflow, revealing the path of its spread. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Zachary Schutte & Amy Reines, eXtreme Gravity Institute, Montana State University / Alyssa Pagan, STScI.

Supermassive Black Hole Triggered Star Formation in Dwarf Galaxy

Jan 20, 2022 by News Staff

Astronomers have observed the central regions of Henize 2-10, a dwarf starburst galaxy previously reported to have a central massive black hole, at optical...

An artist’s impression of a group of stellar-mass black holes in the center of NGC 6397. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / N. Bartmann.

Universe is Teeming with Quintillions of Stellar-Mass Black Holes

Jan 19, 2022 by Enrico de Lazaro

A team of astrophysicists from Italy and the United Kingdom has calculated that in the observable Universe, a sphere of diameter around 90 billion light-years,...

This X-ray image of the Milky Way’s center merges all Swift observations from 2006 through 2013; Sagittarius A* is at the center; low-energy (300 to 1,500 electron volts) X-rays appear red; green are medium-energy (1,500 to 3,000 eV); blue are high-energy (3,000 to 10,000 eV). Image credit: NASA / Swift / N. Degenaar.

Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole Flares Irregularly and Unpredictably, Astronomers Find

Jan 13, 2022 by News Staff

Sagittarius A*, the 4.3-million-solar-mass black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, is a strong source of radio, X-rays and gamma rays. It also...

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