Tag Archive for 'Sagittarius A*'

This artist’s concept portrays the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, known as Sagittarius A*. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / Ralf Crawford, STScI.

Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole is More Active than Previously Thought

Feb 19, 2025 by News Staff

The accretion disk orbiting Sagittarius A* is emitting a constant stream of flares with no periods of rest, according to an analysis of new data from the...

This image indicates the location of the binary star D9, which is orbiting Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. Image credit: ESO / Peißker et al. / S. Guisard.

Binary Star System Detected Close to Milky Way’s Central Black Hole

Dec 17, 2024 by News Staff

Using data from ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and Keck telescope, astronomers have discovered a binary star system in the S star cluster close to...

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...

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.

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,...

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...

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...

Hundreds of thousands of stars are contained in this image of the Sagittarius C region from ESO’s Very Large Telescope. Image credit: ESO / F. Nogueras-Lara.

Sagittarius C Region Contains Hundreds of Thousands of Solar Masses of Young Stars: Study

Feb 12, 2024 by Natali Anderson

Sagittarius C lies just 300 light-years from Sagittarius A*, a supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. Hundreds of thousands of...

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 infrared image from Hubble shows Milky Way’s nuclear star cluster, the densest and most massive star cluster in our Galaxy. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble Heritage Team / STScI / AURA / T. Do & A. Ghez, UCLA / V. Bajaj, STScI.

Astronomers Find Three Young Stars in Milky Way’s Nuclear Star Cluster

Dec 8, 2023 by Enrico de Lazaro

The oldest of these stars is 1.5 billion years old while the youngest is only 100 million years old, according to a paper published in the Astrophysical...

An estimated 500,000 stars shine in this image of Sagittarius C from Webb’s NIRCam instrument. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI / Samuel Crowe, University of Virginia.

Webb Spots Huge Cluster of Protostars in Milky Way’s Center: Sagittarius C

Nov 20, 2023 by Enrico de Lazaro

Sagittarius C lies approximately 300 light-years from Sagittarius A*, the 4.3-million-solar-mass black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. An estimated...

IXPE and Chandra images have been combined to show X-ray data of the area around Sagittarius A. The lower panel combines IXPE data, in orange, with Chandra data in blue. The upper panel depicts a much wider field-of-view of the center of the Milky Way. The thin white lines layered onto the top panel frame the highlighted area, and indicate that the perspective in the bottom panel has been rotated approximately 45 degrees to the right. The combination of IXPE and Chandra data helped the astronomers determine that the X-ray light identified in the molecular clouds originated from Sagittarius A* during an outburst approximately 200 years ago. Image credit: NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center / Marin et al. / CXC / SAO / L. Frattare / J.Major / K.Arcand.

IXPE Detects 200-Year-Old Flare from Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole

Jun 22, 2023 by News Staff

The center of the Milky Way Galaxy hosts Sagittarius A*, a supermassive black hole with a mass of about 4 million solar masses that is very quiescent....

Color-coded position angles for all short and long radio filaments identified in the center of the Milky Way. Image credit: Yusef-Zadeh et al., doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/acd54b.

MeerKAT Finds Hundreds of Horizontal Filaments in Milky Way’s Center

Jun 5, 2023 by News Staff

These mysterious structures likely originated a few million years ago when an outflow from Sagittarius A* — a supermassive black hole in the center...

Multiwavelength detection of the X3 system with NIRC2 instrument at the W.M. Keck Observatory in 2019. Image credit: Peißker et al., doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/aca977.

Massive Protostar Spotted near Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole

Mar 1, 2023 by Natali Anderson

X3a is approximately 10 times larger than the Sun, 15 times as massive, and is only several tens of thousands of years old. Multiwavelength detection of...

Morphology evolution of X7’s thermal dust emission between 2002 and 2021: the images are oriented with equatorial north at the top and with Sagittarius A* positioned in the upper left corner of each panel. Image credit: Ciurlo et al., doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/acb344.

Astronomers Observe Elongated Object near Milky Way’s Central Black Hole

Feb 27, 2023 by News Staff

An elongated dust and gas feature named X7 has a mass of about 50 Earth masses and is on an orbital path around Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black...

The view of the Galactic center observed with the NIRC2 instrument on the Keck II telescope at the W.M. Keck Observatory. This image is high-pass filtered and shows the position of several S stars close to Sgr A*, which is indicated by a black cross. The star in the white dashed circle shows a magnitude of 16.3 mag, while the star in the blue circle is 17 mag faint. Here north is up and east is to the left. Image credit: Peissker et al., doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/ac752f.

Fast-Moving Star Orbits Milky Way’s Central Black Hole in Just Four Years

Jul 6, 2022 by Natali Anderson

The newly-found star, named S4716, reaches a speed of 8,000 km/sec and comes as close as 98 astronomical units (AU) to Sagittarius A*, a supermassive black...

A schematic view of the history of the accretion disk and the flyby object: the three plots starting from the bottom left are snapshots from the numerical simulation, capturing the system right at the flyby event, 4,000 years after, and 8,000 years after, respectively; the top right image is from the ALMA observations, showing the disk with spirals and the two objects around it, corresponding to the system at 12,000 years after the flyby event. Image credit: Lu et al., doi: 10.1038/s41550-022-01681-4.

ALMA Images Spiral Protostellar Disk near Milky Way’s Center

Jun 21, 2022 by News Staff

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have discovered a massive accretion disk with two spiral arms around a 32-solar-mass...

A visualization of the eRosita and Fermi bubbles. Image credit: ESA / Gaia / DPAC / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

Giant Bubbles Above and Below Milky Way’s Center Caused by Galaxy’s Central Black Hole

Mar 11, 2022 by News Staff

In 2020, the X-ray satellite eROSITA revealed two gigantic bubbles extending to 80° above and below the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. The morphology...

An image of the spectral index of radio-emitting filaments in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. Image credit: Yusef-Zadeh et al., doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/ac4802.

New MeerKAT Image Reveals Radio-Emitting Filaments in Milky Way’s Center

Feb 3, 2022 by News Staff

The new image from the MeerKAT telescope at the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) in Cape Town, South Africa, shows nearly 1,000 magnetized...

The complex, cirrus-like emission from the Galactic center super bubble dominates this MeerKAT image. This is traversed by the Radio Arc, a complex of many parallel radio filaments. The radio bubble nestles against the diffuse Sagittarius A region in the lower center of the image. The bright dot near the center of this region is Sagittarius A*. Image credit: I. Heywood, SARAO.

Astronomers Release Unprecedented Radio Image of Milky Way’s Center

Feb 2, 2022 by Enrico de Lazaro

A new image from the MeerKAT telescope at the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) in Cape Town, South Africa, shows radio emission from numerous...

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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