Tag Archive for 'Supermassive black hole'

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...

Giant cavities in the X-ray emitting intracluster medium (shown in blue, as observed by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory) have been carved out by a black hole outburst. X-ray data are overlaid on top of optical data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (in red/orange), where the central galaxy that is likely hosting the culprit supermassive black hole is also visible. Image credit: Calzadilla et al.

Astronomers Witness Extremely Powerful Black Hole Outburst in Distant Galaxy Cluster

Dec 25, 2019 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have spotted an unusual outburst activity in the center of SPT-CLJ0528-5300 (SPT-0528 for short),...

This illustration depicts a gas halo surrounding a quasar in the early Universe. The quasar, in orange, has two powerful jets and a supermassive black hole at its center, which is surrounded by a dusty disk. The halo of glowing hydrogen is represented in blue. Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO.

VLT Spots Huge Halos of Cool Hydrogen around Active Galaxies in Early Universe

Dec 20, 2019 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have spotted enormous hydrogen halos around 12 quasars — a type of active galaxy which shines...

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...

This composite image shows the surroundings of a supermassive black hole that is triggering star formation across the longest distance ever seen; as hot gas swirls around the black hole, it emits large amounts of X-rays that Chandra detects; the black hole is also the source of radio-wave emission from a jet of high-energy particles -- previously detected by scientists with the VLA -- that stretches about a million light-years. Image credit: NASA / CXC / INAF / R. Gilli et al / NRAO / VLA / STScI.

Supermassive Black Hole Triggers Star Formation in Multiple Galaxies

Dec 5, 2019 by News Staff

Enormous black holes usually affect their surroundings through the so-called ‘negative feedback’ — in other words, suppressing the formation...

An artist’s impression of planets orbiting a supermassive black hole. Image credit: Kagoshima University.

Planets May Form and Orbit around Supermassive Black Holes

Nov 25, 2019 by Enrico de Lazaro

Protoplanetary disks around stars may not be the only site for planet formation in the Universe, according to a team of theoretical astrophysicists from...

This image of the Phoenix Cluster combines X-ray, radio and optical data; side panels show the individual images making up the composite. Image credit: NASA / CXC / MIT / M. McDonald et al / NRAO / AUI / NSF / STScI.

Enormous Black Hole Boosts Star Formation in Phoenix Galaxy Cluster

Nov 22, 2019 by News Staff

Supermassive black holes in the center of galaxy clusters usually suppress star formation, but the one in the Phoenix Cluster, a group of about 1,000 galaxies...

NGC 6240 harbors three supermassive black holes at its core: the northern black hole (N) is active and was known before; the zoomed-in new high-spatial resolution image shows that the southern component consists of two supermassive black holes (S1 and S2); the green color indicates the distribution of gas ionized by radiation surrounding the black holes; the red lines show the contours of the starlight from the galaxy and the length of the white bar corresponds to 1,000 light years. Image credit: P. Weilbacher, Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam / NASA / ESA / Hubble Heritage / STScI / AURA / Hubble Collaboration / A. Evans, University of Virginia, Charlottesville / NRAO / Stony Brook University.

Astronomers Find Three Supermassive Black Holes in NGC 6240

Nov 22, 2019 by News Staff

NGC 6240, a well-studied nearby galaxy system in the process of merging, contains three supermassive black holes at its core, two of which are active and...

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 center of the barred spiral galaxy Messier 77. ALMA discovered two counter-rotating flows of gas around the black hole. The colors in this image represent the motion of the gas: blue is material moving toward us, red is moving away. Image credit: NRAO / AUI / NSF / S. Dagnello.

ALMA Spots Counter-Rotating Disks around Supermassive Black Hole in Messier 77

Oct 17, 2019 by News Staff

Supermassive black holes, millions to billions of times the mass of our Sun, are found at the centers of galaxies. Many of these enormous objects are hidden...

Dwarf galaxies hosting active galactic nuclei that have spatially extended outflows. Image credit: Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

Black Hole-Driven Winds Suppress Star Formation in Dwarf Galaxies

Oct 14, 2019 by News Staff

Supermassive black hole-driven outflows in dwarf galaxies have a significant impact on the evolution of these galaxies by suppressing star formation, according...

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...

Pfeifle et al provide the strongest evidence yet for a system of three supermassive black holes. Image credit: NASA / CXC / George Mason University / R. Pfeifle et al / SDSS / NASA / STScI.

Astronomers Find Triple Supermassive Black Hole

Sep 29, 2019 by News Staff

Using data from several space- and ground-based telescopes, astronomers have discovered a system of three supermassive black holes within SDSS J084905.51+111447.2,...

When a star strays too close to a black hole, intense tides break it apart into a stream of gas. The tail of the stream escapes the system, while the rest of it swings back around, surrounding the black hole with a disk of debris. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

TESS Spots Its First Tidal Disruption Event

Sep 27, 2019 by News Staff

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) gave astronomers an unexpected glimpse at a black hole violently ripping apart a Sun-sized star....

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...

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