Tag Archive for 'Supermassive black hole'

This artist’s concept shows the brilliant glare of two quasars residing in the cores of two galaxies that are in the chaotic process of merging. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Joseph Olmsted, STScI.

Merger of Two Massive Disk Galaxies Produces Dual Quasar

Apr 5, 2023 by News Staff

Using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and other space and ground-based observatories, astronomers have discovered SDSS J0749+2255, a closely bound...

This image shows the strong-lensing galaxy Abell 1201 BCG and a gravitational arc. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Nightingale et al., doi: 10.1093/mnras/stad587.

Astronomers Discover Ultramassive Black Hole in Abell 1201

Mar 29, 2023 by Natali Anderson

The newly-discovered ultramassive black hole has a mass of 32.7 billion solar masses and resides in the center of Abell 1201 BCG, a massive elliptical...

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

NASA’s Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope Captures Dynamic Gamma-Ray Sky

Mar 15, 2023 by News Staff

The new animation shows the gamma-ray sky’s frenzied activity during a year of observations by the Large Area Telescope (LAT) aboard NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray...

This image features 3C 297 that is lonelier than expected after it likely pulled in and absorbed its former companion galaxies. In this new composite image, Chandra data is colored purple, VLA data is red and Gemini data is green. Visible light and infrared data from Hubble (blue and orange respectively) have also been included. Image credit: NASA / CXC / University of Torino / Missaglia et al. / ESA / STScI & International Gemini Observatory / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / NRAO / AUI / NSF.

Chandra Finds Surprisingly Lonely Galaxy in Early Universe

Mar 9, 2023 by News Staff

3C 297 is located about 9.2 billion light-years away in the constellation of Virgo and contains a quasar, a supermassive black hole pulling in gas at the...

Illustration of the quasar triplet system and its environment. Image credit: Ni et al., doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/aca160.

New Study Sheds Light on Origin of Ultramassive Black Holes in Early Universe

Mar 2, 2023 by News Staff

Ultramassive black holes with extreme masses of over 50 billion solar masses can be formed in the rare events that are multiple quasar mergers happening...

Multiwavelength detection of the X3 system with NIRC2 instrument at the W.M. Keck Observatory in 2019. Image credit: Peißker et al., doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/aca977.

Massive Protostar Spotted near Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole

Mar 1, 2023 by Natali Anderson

X3a is approximately 10 times larger than the Sun, 15 times as massive, and is only several tens of thousands of years old. Multiwavelength detection of...

This Hubble image shows the spiral galaxy NGC 5033. The image is a composite of separate exposures acquired by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). It is based on data obtained through two filters. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Judy Schmidt, www.geckzilla.com.

ALMA Detects Supermassive Black Hole in Early Star-Forming Galaxy

Feb 28, 2023 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) have detected a rapidly growing supermassive black hole in COS-87259, a galaxy that forms stars...

Morphology evolution of X7’s thermal dust emission between 2002 and 2021: the images are oriented with equatorial north at the top and with Sagittarius A* positioned in the upper left corner of each panel. Image credit: Ciurlo et al., doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/acb344.

Astronomers Observe Elongated Object near Milky Way’s Central Black Hole

Feb 27, 2023 by News Staff

An elongated dust and gas feature named X7 has a mass of about 50 Earth masses and is on an orbital path around Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black...

Two dwarf-dwarf galaxy mergers in galaxy clusters Abell 133 (left) and Abell 1758S (right) are shown in X-rays from Chandra and optical light from the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope. The merger on the left is in a late stage and was given the single name of Mirabilis. The other merger is in the early stages and the two dwarf galaxies are named Elstir (bottom) and Vinteuil (top). Image credit: NASA / CXC / University of Alabama / Micic et al. / International Gemini Observatory / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA.

Chandra Spots Two Pairs of Supermassive Black Holes on Collision Courses

Feb 23, 2023 by News Staff

According to observations and cosmological simulations, dwarf galaxies are the most abundant type of galaxies in the early Universe and the galaxy merger...

An artist’s impression of a supermassive black hole. Image credit: University of Hawai’i at Mānoa.

Astrophysicists Uncover First Observational Evidence of Cosmological Coupling

Feb 15, 2023 by News Staff

Cosmological coupling — a newly-predicted phenomenon in Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity — allows black holes to grow in mass without...

This artist’s conception shows the galaxy merger and its two central black holes. Image credit: ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / M. Weiss, NRAO, AUI & NSF.

UGC 4211’s Pair of Supermassive Black Holes is Closest to Colliding Ever Seen

Jan 11, 2023 by News Staff

While close together in cosmological terms at just 750 light-years apart, or 6x the black hole sphere of influence, the supermassive black holes in the...

$This Webb image shows NGC 7469, a barred spiral galaxy some 206 million light-years away in the constellation of Pegasus. The galaxy has blue-purple hues with orange-red regions filled with stars. NGC 7469’s companion galaxy, IC 5283, is partly visible in the lower left portion of this image. Also visible is large diffraction spike, which appears as a star pattern over the central region of the galaxy. Lots of stars and galaxies fill the background scene. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / Webb / L. Armus / A.S. Evans.$

Webb Studies Star Formation in NGC 7469

Dec 21, 2022 by Enrico de Lazaro

NGC 7469 is a very luminous, face-on barred spiral galaxy approximately 90,000 light-years in diameter. This Webb image shows NGC 7469, a barred spiral...

An artist’s impression of a tidal disruption event. Image credit: Carl Knox / OzGrav, ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery, Swinburne University of Technology.

Astronomers Detect Very Luminous Jet from Star-Eating Supermassive Black Hole

Dec 1, 2022 by News Staff

A supermassive black hole devours a star that has come too close. In extremely rare instances — only about 1% of the time — these so-called...

This illustration shows the IXPE spacecraft (right) observing the blazar Markarian 501 (left). A blazar is a black hole surrounded by a disk of gas and dust with a bright jet of high-energy particles pointed toward Earth. The inset illustration shows high-energy particles in the jet (blue). When the particles hit the shock wave, depicted as a white bar, the particles become energized and emit X-rays as they accelerate. Moving away from the shock, they emit lower-energy light: first visible, then infrared, and radio waves. Farther from the shock, the magnetic field lines are more chaotic, causing more turbulence in the particle stream. Image credit: NASA / Pablo Garcia.

IXPE Spacecraft Examines Particle Acceleration in Blazar Jets

Nov 24, 2022 by News Staff

Blazars are active galactic nuclei with jets of magnetized plasma that point nearly along the line of sight. Most of the light from these extremely luminous...

Kishimoto et al. captured a long-sought-after view of the dusty inner region in NGC 4151. Image credit: Georgia State University / CHARA Array.

Astronomers Detect Innermost Dusty Ring of Active Galactic Nucleus

Nov 19, 2022 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA) Array interferometer at the Mount Wilson Observatory have observed the long-sought,...

This image, taken with Webb’s Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI), shows the barred spiral galaxy NGC 7469. Image credit: Bohn et al., arXiv: 2209.04466.

Webb Detects Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Nuclear Regions of Seyfert Galaxies

Oct 11, 2022 by News Staff

Astronomers have analyzed publicly available data from the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) on the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope for three Seyfert...

This artist’s illustration indicates where the modeling of the ALMA data predicts the hot spot to be and its orbit around Sagittarius A*. Image credit: ESO / M. Kornmesser / M. Wielgus / Event Horizon Collaboration.

ALMA Spots Bubble of Hot Gas in Orbit around Milky Way’s Central Black Hole

Sep 22, 2022 by News Staff

Sagittarius A*, the 4.3-million-solar-mass black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, was observed with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter...

The emission from M87* has been resolved into a bright, thin ring (orange colormap), arising from the infinite sequence of additional images of the emission region, and the more diffuse primary image, produced by the photons that come directly toward Earth (in blue contours); when viewed at the imaging resolution of the Event Horizon Telescope, the two components blur together; however, by separately searching for the thin ring, it is possible to sharpen the view of M87*, isolating the fingerprint of strong gravity. Image credit: Broderick et al., doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/ac7c1d.

Astrophysicists Produce Image of Supermassive Black Hole’s Photon Ring

Aug 17, 2022 by News Staff

In April 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration released stunning images of M87*, a supermassive black hole in the center of Messier 87,...

This image of NGC 7727 was captured by the FORS2 instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. Image credit: ESO.

VLT Sees Spectacular Cosmic Collision: NGC 7727

Aug 16, 2022 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers using the FOcal Reducer and low dispersion Spectrograph 2 (FORS2) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have taken a picture of...

The view of the Galactic center observed with the NIRC2 instrument on the Keck II telescope at the W.M. Keck Observatory. This image is high-pass filtered and shows the position of several S stars close to Sgr A*, which is indicated by a black cross. The star in the white dashed circle shows a magnitude of 16.3 mag, while the star in the blue circle is 17 mag faint. Here north is up and east is to the left. Image credit: Peissker et al., doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/ac752f.

Fast-Moving Star Orbits Milky Way’s Central Black Hole in Just Four Years

Jul 6, 2022 by Natali Anderson

The newly-found star, named S4716, reaches a speed of 8,000 km/sec and comes as close as 98 astronomical units (AU) to Sagittarius A*, a supermassive black...

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