Tag Archive for Supermassive black hole

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...

ALMA made the most precise measurements of cold gas swirling around a supermassive black hole -- the cosmic behemoth at the center of the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 3258. The multi-color ellipse reflects the motion of the gas orbiting the black hole, with blue indicating motion toward us and red motion away from us. The inset box represents how the orbital velocity changes with distance from the black hole. The material was found to rotate faster the closer in the astronomers observed to the black hole, enabling them to accurately calculate its mass: a whopping 2.25 billion times the mass of our Sun. Image credit: ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / B. Boizelle / AUI / NSF / S. Dagnello / Hubble Space Telescope / NASA / ESA / Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey.

ALMA Determines Mass of Supermassive Black Hole in NGC 3258

Aug 8, 2019 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have observed the dynamical sphere of influence of a supermassive black hole...

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...

An artist’s impression of the peculiar thin disk of material circling a supermassive black hole at the heart of NGC 3147. Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESA / Hubble.

Thin Accretion Disk around NGC 3147’s Central Black Hole Surprises Astronomers

Jul 12, 2019 by News Staff

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have found an unexpected thin disk of material furiously whirling around a supermassive black hole...

Dai et al used Chandra to measure the spin of five quasars. Gravitational lensing of the light from each of these black holes by an intervening galaxy has created multiple images of each quasar, as shown by these Chandra images of four of the targets. Image credit: NASA / CXC / University of Oklahoma / Dai et al.

Chandra Uses Gravitational Lens to Capture Spinning Black Holes

Jul 5, 2019 by News Staff

By combining the capability of NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory with the power of a natural phenomenon called gravitational lensing, a team of astronomers...

This Hubble image shows the dwarf starburst galaxy ESO 495-21. The galaxy is just 3,000 light-years across, a fraction of the size of the Milky Way, but that is not stopping the galaxy from furiously forming huge numbers of stars. This image is a composite of separate exposures acquired by Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) and Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) instruments. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.

Dwarf Starburst Galaxy Harbors Supermassive Black Hole

Jun 14, 2019 by News Staff

A starburst galaxy called ESO 495-21 is just 3,000 light-years across, but it harbors a black hole of about one million solar masses at its core. This...

An artist’s impression of a disk of cool interstellar gas surrounding the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Image credit: NRAO / AUI / NSF / S. Dagnello.

ALMA Spots Rotating Disk of Cool Hydrogen around Milky Way’s Central Black Hole

Jun 7, 2019 by News Staff

There is a supermassive black hole of nearly 4 million solar masses at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. A large reservoir of hot and cooler hydrogen...

The EHT Collaboration unveiled the first direct visual evidence of the supermassive black hole in the center of the elliptical galaxy Messier 87 and its shadow. The shadow of a black hole seen here is the closest we can come to an image of the black hole itself, a completely dark object from which light cannot escape. The black hole’s boundary -- the event horizon from which the EHT takes its name -- is around 2.5 times smaller than the shadow it casts and measures just under 25 billion miles (40 billion km) across. Image credit: EHT Collaboration.

Event Horizon Telescope Captures First Image of Black Hole

Apr 10, 2019 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) — a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes (ALMA, APEX, the IRAM 30-m telescope,...

VLA image of Cygnus A’s central region. Image credit: Carilli et al / NRAO / AUI / NSF.

Astronomers Capture Direct Image of Active Galactic Nucleus Torus

Apr 5, 2019 by News Staff

Astronomers using NSF’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) have caught the direct image of the thick torus surrounding the supermassive black hole...

NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope produced this composite image of the central region of our Milky Way Galaxy. Note that the center of the Galaxy is located within the bright white region to the right of and just below the middle of the image. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / ESA / CXC / STScI.

NASA: 360-Degree Visualization Shows Galactic Center

Mar 26, 2019 by News Staff

A new immersive, 360-degree, ultra-high-definition visualization provides more details of what NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory sees in X-rays around...

The ‘Teacup’ quasar is causing an ongoing storm. The ‘handle’ is a ring of X-ray (blue) and optical (red and green) light surrounding a giant bubble, shown in the Chandra and Hubble data. This handle-shaped feature, which is located about 30,000 light-years from the galaxy’s central supermassive black hole, was likely formed by one or more eruptions powered by the black hole. Image credit: X-ray -- NASA / CXC / University of Cambridge / G. Lansbury et al; optical - NASA / STScI / W. Keel et al; radio - NRAO / VLA.

‘Teacup’ Quasar Causes Galactic Storms

Mar 18, 2019 by News Staff

SDSS J143029.88+133912.0, nicknamed the ‘Teacup’ because of its shape, is a quasar located about 1.1 billion light-years away. The power source of...

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