Tag Archive for 'Supermassive black hole'

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.

eROSITA X-Ray Telescope Captures Hot, Energetic Universe

Jun 19, 2020 by News Staff

A new all-sky image from the eROSITA X-ray telescope onboard the Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG) space observatory contains over one million objects, about...

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...

PKS 2014-55 is classified as ‘X-shaped’ because of its appearance in previous relatively blurry images. The detail provided in this radio image obtained with the MeerKAT telescope indicates that its shape is best described as a double boomerang. Two powerful jets of radio waves, indicated in blue color, each extend 2.5 million light-years into space. Eventually, they are ‘turned back’ by the pressure of tenuous intergalactic gas. As they flow back towards the central galaxy, they are deflected by its relatively high gas pressure into the shorter, horizontal, arms of the boomerang. The background image shows visible light from myriad galaxies in the distant Universe. Image credit: NRAO / AUI / NSF / SARAO / DES.

Astronomers Crack Mystery of X-Shaped Radio Galaxies

May 8, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers using the MeerKAT telescope at the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory in Cape Town, South Africa, have solved a longstanding mystery...

This artist’s impression shows how ULAS J1120+0641, a very distant quasar powered by a black hole with a mass two billion times that of the Sun, may have looked. Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO.

New Measurements of Fine-Structure Constant Suggest Laws of Nature Not as Constant as Previously Thought

Apr 29, 2020 by News Staff

The fine-structure constant is a measure of electromagnetism — one of the four fundamental forces in nature; the others are gravity, weak nuclear...

Chandra and XMM-Newton data indicate that a white dwarf survived a close call with the central black hole in GSN 069. Image credit: NASA / CXO / CSIC-INTA / G. Miniutti et al / CXC / M. Weiss.

Near-Miss Tidal Disruption: White Dwarf Survives Close Encounter with Supermassive Black Hole

Apr 28, 2020 by News Staff

Professor Andrew King from the University of Leicester has shown that periodic X-ray eruptions from a galaxy called GSN 069 could result from the core...

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...

This artist’s impression illustrates how high-speed jets from supermassive black holes would look. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / L. Calçada, ESO.

Astronomers Observe Relativistic Jet from Two Merging Spiral Galaxies

Apr 8, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers using the 8.2-m Subaru Telescope report the first unambiguous detection of a relativistic jet — a beam of charged particles that travels...

An artist’s impression of MG J0414+0534. Image credit: Kindai University.

ALMA Uses Cosmic Lens to Capture Disturbed Gas Clouds in Distant Quasar

Mar 31, 2020 by News Staff

By combining the power of strong gravitational lensing with the capability of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a team of astronomers...

Reynolds et al used Chandra to look for extraordinarily low-mass axion-like particles in the Perseus galaxy cluster, a group of galaxies located 240 million light-years away from Earth. The observation lasting over five days showed no evidence for certain axion-like particles, which some theorists think can explain dark matter. The lack of detection in these Chandra observations helps rule out some versions of string theory, a set of models intended to tie together all known forces, interactions, and particles. Image credit: NASA / CXC / University of Cambridge / Reynolds et al.

Astrophysicists Perform Test of String Theory

Mar 25, 2020 by News Staff

Astrophysicists using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have looked for signs of an as-yet undetected particle predicted by string theory, a set of models...

The collision of two black holes. Image credit: Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes Project.

Astronomers Propose New Mechanism for Growth of Supermassive Black Hole Seeds

Mar 24, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

In a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal, a team of astronomers in Italy proposes that heavy seeds of supermassive black holes formed via the...

An artist’s impression of a quasar. Image credit: NASA / ESA / J. Olmsted, STScI.

Hubble Space Telescope Spots Quasar Tsunamis

Mar 20, 2020 by News Staff

Quasars are the ultra-bright cores of distant active galaxies. These objects are among the most distant and luminous objects known. Their central engines...

Time-averaged image of a general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulation of the supermassive black hole in Messier 87. Image credit: Johnson et al, doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aaz1310.

Astronomers Discover Way to Get Sharp Images of Black Hole’s Photon Rings

Mar 19, 2020 by News Staff

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

An artist’s impression of a blazar. Image credit: DESY / Science Communication Lab.

Astronomers Discover Most Distant Blazar Yet

Mar 11, 2020 by Sergio Prostak

Astronomers using the Large Binocular Telescope have found a blazar 13 billion light-years from Earth, making it officially the most distant blazar ever...

Evidence for the biggest black hole eruption seen in the Universe comes from a combination of X-ray data from Chandra and XMM-Newton, and the Murchison Widefield Array and Giant Metrewave Telescope, as shown here. The eruption is generated by a black hole located in the central galaxy of the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster, which has blasted out jets and carved a large cavity in the surrounding hot gas. Image credit: NASA / CXC / NRL / S. Giacintucci et al / ESA / XMM-Newton / NCRA / TIFR / GMRT / 2MASS / UMass / IPAC-Caltech / NSF.

Universe’s Most Powerful Black Hole Eruption Spotted

Feb 28, 2020 by News Staff

Using data from ESA’s XMM-Newton and NASA’s Chandra X-ray space observatories, along with two ground-based radio telescopes in Australia and India,...

This Hubble image shows the galaxy NGC 4490. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / D. Calzetti, UMass / LEGUS Team / J. Maund, University of Sheffield / R. Chandar, University of Toledo.

Interacting Spiral Galaxy NGC 4490 Has Double Nucleus

Feb 6, 2020 by News Staff

One nucleus in NGC 4490 is visible in the optical wavelengths, while the other is only visible at infrared and radio wavelengths, according to a new study...

This illustration shows the surroundings of a black hole feeding on ambient gas as mapped using ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray observatory. Image credit: ESA.

Astronomers Map Surroundings of Supermassive Black Hole

Jan 22, 2020 by News Staff

As material spirals towards a black hole, it is heated up and emits X-rays that, in turn, echo and reverberate as they interact with nearby gas. These...

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...

NGC 6240 as seen with ALMA. Image credit: ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / E. Treister / AUI / NSF / S. Dagnello / NASA / ESA / Hubble.

ALMA Finds Molecular Gas within Sphere of Influence of Binary Supermassive Black Hole

Jan 14, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have mapped the distribution of molecular gas in NGC 6240, a nearby merging galaxy...

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...

This composite image shows the Milky Way-like spiral galaxy Messier 106: X-rays from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory are shown in blue, radio data from the NSF’s Karl Jansky Very Large Array are shown in purple, optical data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope are shown in yellow and infrared data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope are shown in red. Image credit: NASA / CXC / Caltech / P. Ogle et al / STScI / JPL-Caltech / NSF / NRAO / VLA.

Astronomers Capture Galactic Fireworks in Nearby Spiral Galaxy

Jan 1, 2020 by News Staff

This impressive fireworks display, which involves a supermassive black hole, enormous shock waves and vast reservoirs of gas, is taking place in an intermediate...

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