Tag Archive for 'Supermassive black hole'

Little red dots may reside in small galaxies with total masses equivalent to around one billion times that of the Sun. Image credit: Zhang et al., doi: 10.1038/s41550-026-02945-z.

Mysterious ‘Little Red Dots’ Could Be Tiny Galaxies with Giant Black Holes at Their Hearts

Aug 25, 2026 by News Staff

The mysterious objects spotted in the early Universe may not be isolated points of light after all. A new analysis of images of 217 ‘little red dots’...

This sequence of images, taken with the GRAVITY instrument at ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer, show several stars orbiting Sagittarius A*. One of these stars, known as S301, was recently found to pass much closer to the black hole than any other known star. Image credit: ESO / GRAVITY Collaboration.

Newly-Discovered Star Could Finally Reveal Spin of Our Galaxy’s Central Black Hole

Aug 19, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers have spotted a faint, previously unknown star whipping around Sagittarius A*, the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole, on the tightest and...

Mid-infrared image of the IRS 3 environment, observed with VLT/NACO and Webb/MIRI/MRS. Image credit: Peißker et al., doi: 10.1051/0004-6361/202660243.

Water and Dust Found Surviving near Milky Way’s Central Black Hole

Aug 14, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Using data from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers found that IRS 3 — a bloated giant star orbiting just 0.55 light-years to...

Mishra et al. suggest that AGN dust tori host the largest populations of planets in the Universe. Image credit: ESO.

Dusty Accretion Disks around Supermassive Black Holes May Be Secret Planet Factories

Aug 13, 2026 by News Staff

Astronomers from New Mexico State University, Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center and CUNY Borough of Manhattan Community College propose that the...

This Webb image shows the MoM-BH*-1 object. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / Webb / Naidu et al., doi: 10.1038/s41586-026-10846-4.

Astronomers Find Black Hole Star in Early Universe

Aug 12, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Roughly 660 million years after the Big Bang, a strange bright red spot has been hiding in plain sight in one of the deepest fields ever imaged by the...

TDE 2025abcr. Image credit: Stein et al., doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/ae77f3.

Astronomers Spot Wandering Supermassive Black Hole Far From Its Galaxy’s Heart

Jul 29, 2026 by News Staff

Astronomers have discovered a dormant supermassive black hole 30,000 light-years from the center of WISEA J014656.04-152214.7 — a massive galaxy...

This Hubble image shows the elliptical galaxy NGC 4696. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / A. Fabian.

Webb Catches Supermassive Black Hole Feeding from Cosmic Gas Streams

Jul 14, 2026 by News Staff

New images of the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 4696 from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope reveal gas filaments funneling material into a spinning...

This collage shows 15 of the 31 newly discovered quasars by ESA’s Euclid space telescope. EUCL J172902.75+641018.1 and EUCL J125308.55+705432.3 are visible on the first row, the first and second from the left, respectively. Image credit: ESA / Euclid / Euclid Consortium / NASA / Euclid Science Ground Segment / Antoine Basset, CNES.

Euclid Discovers Earliest Quasars Ever Seen

Jul 8, 2026 by News Staff

Astronomers using ESA’s Euclid space telescope have discovered 31 ancient quasars from a time when the Universe was just 670 to 800 million years old....

This Webb image shows the little red dot GLIMPSE-17775, which is located behind the galaxy cluster Abell S1063. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / Vasily Kokorev, UT Austin / Alyssa Pagan, STScI.

Webb Delivers Strongest-Ever Case for ‘Black Hole Stars’ Lurking in Early Universe

Jun 15, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

For several years, astronomers have been puzzling over a peculiar population of objects discovered by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope —...

This composite image contains X-rays from Chandra and XMM-Newton missions (shown in blue) as well as radio data from the MeerKAT telescope (shown in red) in South Africa. These have been combined with an optical image from the Pan-STARRS telescopes in Hawai’i (red, green, and blue). Image credit: NASA / CXC / UCLA / Zhu et al. / ESA / XMM-Newton / PanSTARRS / MeerKAT / CSA / STScI / SAO / L. Frattare & P. Edmonds.

Astronomers May Have Found Supernova Remnant near Milky Way’s Central Black Hole

Jun 12, 2026 by News Staff

Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton satellite, astronomers identified a possible remnant of ancient stellar explosion just...

This image shows the evidence for the wind blowing away from Sagittarius A*: the white dot in the center of the image shows the supermassive black hole; in orange is data from ALMA, mapping the location of cold gas composed of carbon monoxide in the image; in blue is X-ray data from Chandra; a large cone-shaped cavity, visible as an absence of cold gas in the ALMA data, is filled by hot X-ray-emitting gas in the Chandra data. Image credit: NASA / CXC / UMass / Wang et al. / ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / Longmore et al. / Minniti et al.

Astronomers Finally Find Milky Way’s Missing Black Hole Wind

Jun 8, 2026 by News Staff

After a 50-year search, astronomers have uncovered evidence that Sagittarius A* — the 4.3-million-solar-mass black hole that resides at the center...

This Webb image shows the highly distorted red galaxy MRG-M0138 seen through a foreground cluster of galaxies (white sources). Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / Webb.

Webb Weighs Most Distant Inactive Black Hole Ever Found

Jun 5, 2026 by News Staff

A supermassive black hole 6 billion times the mass of the Sun lurks in MRG-M0138, a gravitationally lensed quiescent galaxy seen when the Universe was...

This image, taken with the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) instrument aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows the spiral galaxy Messier 88. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / D. Thilker / MAUVE-HST Team.

Hubble Captures Active Spiral Galaxy: Messier 88

Jun 1, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

A newly-released Hubble image shows Messier 88, a black hole-powered spiral galaxy that is gradually plunging toward the crowded heart of the Virgo Cluster. This...

This Webb/NIRCam image shows the little red dot Abell2744-QSO1, magnified and triply imaged by galaxy cluster Abell 2744. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / Lukas Furtak, Ben-Gurion University / Alyssa Pagan, STScI.

Webb Spots Supermassive Black Hole Older Than Its Home Galaxy

May 28, 2026 by News Staff

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have found an enormous black hole in the early Universe that appears to predate its own host...

Radio signal from the quasar TXS 2005+403 travels roughly 10 billion light-years to reach Earth, traversing the Cygnus region, one of the most turbulent and scattering environments in the Milky Way Galaxy. On the left, this artist’s conception shows the quasar as it truly appears, with a bright accretion disk and jets blasting into the Galaxy like a beacon through the darkness. On the right, we see how turbulent gas distorts scientists’ view of the quasar in much the same way heat haze from a fire warps our view of the objects behind it. Image credit: Melissa Weiss / CfA.

Astronomers Catch Interstellar Turbulence Warping Light across Milky Way

May 15, 2026 by News Staff

For the first time, astronomers have directly detected how turbulent clouds of ionized gas between the stars bend and blur radio signal from a distant...

$This image of Messier 77 from Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) highlights its swirling spiral arms, the dust in its disk and its piercingly bright core like never before. The bright orange lines appearing to radiate out from the galaxy’s center are not actually a feature of the galaxy: they are a type of distortion that arises from the optical design of the telescope. Called diffraction spikes, they are created because the intense light from the unresolved AGN is bent (diffracted) very slightly at the edges of Webb’s hexagonal mirror panels and around one of the struts that hold up its secondary mirror. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / Webb / A. Leroy.$

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Tag Archive for Supermassive black hole