Tag Archive for 'Sagittarius A*'

In this illustration of the center of the Milky Way, stars are seen to be in close orbit around Sagittarius A*. Image credit: Gemini Observatory / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / J. da Silva, Spaceengine / M. Zamani, NOIRLab.

Astrophysicists Make Most Precise Measurement Yet of Milky Way’s Central Black Hole Mass

Dec 15, 2021 by News Staff

Sagittarius A*, supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, has a mass of 4.3 million times that of the Sun, according to an analysis...

This is a composite view of X-rays, molecular gas, and warm ionized gas near the Milky Way’s center (yellow represents Hubble data, blue is Chandra data, green is ALMA data, and red is VLA data). The orange-colored features are of glowing hydrogen gas. One such feature, at the top tip of the jet is interpreted as a hydrogen cloud that has been hit by the outflowing jet. The jet scatters off the cloud into tendrils that flow northward. Farther down near the black hole are X-ray observations of superheated gas colored blue and molecular gas in green. These data are evidence that the black hole occasionally accretes stars or gas clouds, and ejects some of the superheated material along its spin axis. The graphic of a translucent, vertical white fan is added to show the suggested axis of a mini-jet from the supermassive black hole at the Galaxy’s heart. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Gerald Cecil, University of North Carolina / Joseph DePasquale, STScI.

Astronomers Spot Nuclear Jet near Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole

Dec 10, 2021 by News Staff

Astronomers have uncovered evidence that Sagittarius A*, the 4-million-solar-mass black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, is not a sleeping monster...

Clumps of molecular gas overlaid on Sagittarius A* circumnuclear disk as seen by ALMA in the CS(7-6) line. Yellow circles are thin clumps that are going to be shredded by the gravitational force of supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*. Green circles are dense enough to survive the tidal shredding but are not able to form stars. Purple/pink circles have the needed density to form stars, but no star formation has been observed. Image credit: Hsieh et al. / ALMA / EOS / NAOJ / NRAO.

ALMA Spots Quiescent Molecular Clouds and Tides around Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole

Sep 16, 2021 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have found thousands of dense gas clumps but, surprisingly, no star formation,...

This panorama shows the central region of the Milky Way Galaxy. It builds on previous surveys from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes, and expands Chandra’s high-energy view farther above and below the plane of the Galaxy than previous imaging campaigns. X-rays from Chandra are orange, green, and purple, showing different X-ray energies, and the radio data from MeerKAT are gray. Image credit: NASA / CXC / UMass / Q.D. Wang / NRF / SARAO / MeerKAT.

New Map Reveals X-Ray-Emitting Threads and Plume-Like Structures near Milky Way’s Center

May 28, 2021 by News Staff

Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa, an astronomer from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst has...

This composite image contains data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue) and the NSF’s Very Large Array (red) of Sgr A East. This object is located very close to the supermassive black hole in the Milky Way’s center, and likely overruns the disk of material surrounding the black hole. Image credit: NASA / CXC / Nanjing University / Zhou et al. / NSF / NRAO / VLA.

Chandra Finds Rare Supernova Remnant in Milky Way’s Center

Feb 9, 2021 by News Staff

Sagittarius A East (Sgr A East), a supernova remnant located strikingly close to the central supermassive black hole of our Milky Way Galaxy, resulted...

This image from the eROSITA X-ray telescope shows the energetic Universe. As eROSITA scans the sky, the energy of the collected photons is measured with an accuracy ranging from 2% - 6%. To generate this image, in which the whole sky is projected onto an ellipse (so-called Aitoff projection) with the center of the Milky Way in the middle and the body of our Galaxy running horizontally, photons have been color-coded according to their energy (red for energies 0.3-0.6 keV, green for 0.6-1 keV, blue for 1-2.3 keV). The red diffuse glow away from the galactic plane is the emission of the hot gas in the vicinity of the Solar System (the Local Bubble). Along the plane itself, dust and gas absorb the lowest energy X-ray photons, so that only high-energy emitting sources can be seen, and their color appears blue in the image. The hotter gas close to the Galactic center, shown in green and yellow, carries imprinted the history of the most energetic processes in the life of the Milky Way, such as supernova explosions, driving fountains of gas out of the plane, and, possibly, past outburst from the now dormant supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way. Piercing through this turbulent, hot diffuse medium, are hundreds of thousands of X-ray sources, which appear mostly white in the image, and uniformly distributed over the sky. Among them, distant active galactic nuclei are visible as point sources, while clusters of galaxies reveal themselves as extended X-ray nebulosities. In total, about one million X-ray sources have been detected in this image. Image credit: Jeremy Sanders, Hermann Brunner & the eSASS team / Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics / Eugene Churazov & Marat Gilfanov, IKI.

Astronomers Detect Large-Scale X-Ray Bubbles in Milky Way’s Halo

Dec 31, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers using the eROSITA X-ray telescope onboard the Spektrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG) observatory have detected X-ray-emitting bubbles that extend approximately...

Position and velocity map of the Milky Way Galaxy; arrows show position and velocity data for 224 objects used to model the Galaxy; the solid black lines show the positions of the Galaxy’s spiral arms; the colors indicate groups of objects belonging the same arm. Image credit: NAOJ.

Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole is Closer than Astronomers Thought

Nov 27, 2020 by News Staff

The distance between our Solar System and Sagittarius A*, the 4-million-solar-mass black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, is approximately 25,800...

Supermassive black holes at the cores of galaxies blast radiation and ultra-fast winds outward, as illustrated in this artist’s conception. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole is Spinning Slowly, Astronomers Say

Oct 28, 2020 by News Staff

Supermassive black holes are characterized by just two numbers: mass and spin, but have a critical influence on the formation and evolution of galaxies....

Astronomers Detect Anomalous Cold Gas Outflow from Milky Way’s Center

Aug 20, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers have observed cold, dense and high-velocity molecular gas outflowing from the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. The presence of this gas is puzzling,...

About 3.5 million years, a tremendous explosion rocked the center of our galaxy. Our distant hominid ancestors, already afoot on the African plains, likely would have seen the resulting flare as a ghostly glow high overhead in the night sky. Image credit: NASA / ESA / G. Cecil, UNC, Chapel Hill & J. DePasquale, STScI.

Astronomers Uncover New Clues about Ancient Explosion in Milky Way’s Center

Jun 3, 2020 by News Staff

About 3.5 million years ago, a so-called Seyfert flare from Sagittarius A*, Milky Way’s supermassive black hole, created two enormous ionization cones...

Star Hurtling around Milky Way’s Central Black Hole Validates Einstein’s General Relativity

Apr 17, 2020 by News Staff

At the center of the Milky Way lurks Sagittarius A*, a supermassive black hole that is four million times the mass of the Sun. Located 26,000 light-years...

CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales, Australia. Image credit: Shaun Amy.

Breakthrough Listen Scientists Release New Data from SETI Survey of Milky Way

Feb 18, 2020 by News Staff

The Breakthrough Listen Initiative, the largest ever scientific research program aimed at finding evidence of alien civilizations, has released data from...

An artist’s rendering shows G-objects, with the reddish centers, orbiting the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*. The black hole is represented as a dark sphere inside a white ring (above the middle of the rendering). Image credit: Jack Ciurlo.

Astronomers Spot Four New G-Objects near Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole

Jan 17, 2020 by News Staff

At the center of our Milky Way Galaxy lurks Sagittarius A*, a supermassive black hole that is four million times the mass of the Sun. Recently, two unusual...

This composite image shows dense swirls of gas and dust in the central region of our Milky Way Galaxy. The image spans 600 light-years across and is helping astronomers learn how many massive stars are forming in the Galactic center. New data from SOFIA taken at 25 and 37 microns, shown in blue and green, are combined with data from ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory, shown in red (70 microns), and NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, shown in white (8 microns). Image credit: NASA / SOFIA / JPL-Caltech / ESA / Herschel.

SOFIA Maps Most Energetic Portion of Milky Way

Jan 8, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Faint Object Infrared Camera for the SOFIA Telescope (FORCAST) instrument onboard NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared...

An artistic illustration of a binary black hole. Image credit: NASA / ESA / G. Bacon, STScI.

Milky Way’s Central Black Hole May Have a Supermassive Companion

Dec 16, 2019 by The Conversation

Do supermassive black holes have friends? The nature of galaxy formation suggests that the answer is yes, and in fact, pairs of supermassive black holes...

An artist’s impression of S5-HVS1’s ejection by Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. Sagittarius A* and the captured binary partner to S5-HVS1 are seen far away in the left corner of the picture, while S5-HVS1 is in the foreground, speeding away from them. Image credit: James Josephides, Swinburne Astronomy Productions.

S5-HVS1: Hypervelocity Star Ejected by Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole

Nov 13, 2019 by News Staff

A main-sequence hypervelocity star traveling at huge speeds after being ejected by Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky...

Digital art by Les Bossinas, Cortez III Service Corp., 1998.

Physicists Propose New Method to Detect Traversable Wormholes

Oct 24, 2019 by News Staff

In a new paper published this month in the journal Physical Review D, a duo of theoretical physicists from Case Western Reserve University, the University...

An artist’s impression of the massive bursts of ionizing radiation exploding from the center of the Milky Way and impacting the Magellanic Stream. Image credit: James Josephides / ASTRO 3D.

Highly Energetic Explosion Occurred in Milky Way’s Center 3.5 Million Years Ago

Oct 7, 2019 by News Staff

About 3.5 million years ago, a Seyfert flare from Sagittarius A*, a supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, created two enormous...

Radio image of the center of the Milky Way with a portion of the MeerKAT telescope array in the foreground. Image credit: University of Oxford / SARAO.

Astronomers Detect Giant Radio Bubbles in Milky Way’s Center

Sep 12, 2019 by News Staff

Astronomers using the MeerKAT telescope at the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory have spotted a pair of enormous radio-emitting bubbles in the...

A star known as S0-2 made its closest approach to Sagittarius A*, the a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, in 2018. Image credit: Nicolle Fuller / National Science Foundation.

Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity Aces Relativistic Redshift Test

Jul 26, 2019 by News Staff

In a test of Einstein’s theory of general relativity near the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, an international group of...

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