Tag Archive for 'Supermassive black hole'

The dwarf spheroidal galaxy Leo I is 30 times smaller than the Milky Way Galaxy. Image credit: ESA / Gaia / DPAC / SDSS.

Dwarf Galaxy Leo I Hosts Strangely Massive Black Hole, Astronomers Say

Dec 2, 2021 by News Staff

A black hole in the center of a dwarf spheroidal galaxy called Leo I is almost as massive as the central black hole of our own Milky Way Galaxy. The dwarf...

This image, taken with the MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, shows two bright galactic nuclei, each housing a supermassive black hole, in NGC 7727. Image credit: ESO / Voggel et al.

Astronomers Find Two Supermassive Black Holes in NGC 7727

Dec 1, 2021 by Enrico de Lazaro

The supermassive black hole pair, located in the peculiar galaxy NGC 7727, is about 89 million light-years away from Earth, making it the record holder...

A view of the accretion disk around the supermassive black hole, with jet-like structures flowing away from the disk. The extreme mass of the black hole bends spacetime, allowing the far side of the accretion disc to be seen as an image above and below the black hole. Image credit: Science Communication Lab, DESY.

Black Holes Grow along with Universe’s Expansion, Study Suggests

Nov 4, 2021 by News Staff

Since the first observation of merging black holes in 2015, astrophysicists have been repeatedly surprised by their large masses. They originally expected...

Graphic showing the orbit of stars around a supermassive black hole before, left, and after, right, a gravitational kick. Image credit: Steven Burrows / JILA.

Astronomers Solve Mystery of Strangely-Shaped Mass of Stars in Andromeda Galaxy’s Center

Nov 3, 2021 by News Staff

The Andromeda galaxy is a barred spiral galaxy 2.5 million light-years from Earth. Otherwise known as Messier 31, it hosts a double nucleus, which is well-explained...

This Hubble image shows the active barred spiral galaxy NGC 5728. The color image was made from separate exposures taken in the visible and infrared regions of the spectrum with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). Four filters were used to sample various wavelengths. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Riess et al. / J. Greene.

Hubble Looks at Active Spiral Galaxy: NGC 5728

Sep 27, 2021 by Enrico de Lazaro

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken the most detailed image so far of a barred spiral galaxy called NGC 5728. This Hubble image shows the active...

Clumps of molecular gas overlaid on Sagittarius A* circumnuclear disk as seen by ALMA in the CS(7-6) line. Yellow circles are thin clumps that are going to be shredded by the gravitational force of supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*. Green circles are dense enough to survive the tidal shredding but are not able to form stars. Purple/pink circles have the needed density to form stars, but no star formation has been observed. Image credit: Hsieh et al. / ALMA / EOS / NAOJ / NRAO.

ALMA Spots Quiescent Molecular Clouds and Tides around Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole

Sep 16, 2021 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have found thousands of dense gas clumps but, surprisingly, no star formation,...

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.

Quasars are Standardizable Cosmic Candles, Astronomers Say

Sep 14, 2021 by News Staff

Using spectral data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), the Chandra Source Catalog 2.0, and the Chandra COSMOS Legacy survey, astronomers have found...

MG B2016+112: the X-ray light from one of the objects on the left (purple) has been warped by the gravity of the intervening galaxy to produce two beams and X-ray sources (A and B) detected in the Chandra image, which is represented by the dashed square on the right; the X-ray light from the fainter object (blue) produces an X-ray source (C) that has been amplified by the galaxy to be as much as 300 times brighter than it would have been without the lensing; the Chandra image is shown in the inset; these two X-ray-emitting objects are likely a pair of growing supermassive black holes or a growing supermassive black hole and a jet. Image credit: NASA / CXC / M. Weiss / SAO / Schwartz et al.

Chandra Observes Gravitationally-Lensed Supermassive Black Hole System

Sep 1, 2021 by News Staff

By combining gravitational lensing with the capabilities of NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have detected two X-ray-emitting objects —...

Dacheng Lin et al discovered a ‘wandering’ black hole in the lenticular galaxy GJ1417+52. The main panel has a wide-field, optical light image from Hubble. The black hole and its host galaxy are located within the box in the upper left. The inset on the left contains Hubble’s close-up view of GJ1417+52. Within this inset the circle shows a point-like source on the northern outskirts of the galaxy that may be associated with XJ1417+52. The inset on the right is Chandra’s X-ray image of XJ1417+52 in purple, covering the same region as the Hubble close-up. Image credit: X-ray – NASA / CXC / UNH / Dacheng Lin et al; optical – NASA / STScI.

Wandering Supermassive Black Holes May Be More Abundant than Previously Thought

Aug 23, 2021 by News Staff

New research led by astronomers from the Harvard & Smithsonian’s Center for Astrophysics shows that the current census of supermassive black holes...

A compilation of the new science results from LOFAR. Image credit: Ramírez-Olivencia et al. / NASA, ESA / Hubble Heritage Team / STScI / AURA / A. Evans, University of Virginia, Charlottesville / NRAO / Stony Brook University / R. Cumming / C. Groeneveld / R. Timmerman / LOFAR / Kukreti / Sloan Digital Sky Survey / A. Kappes / F. Sweijen / DESI Legacy Imaging Survey / S. Badole / L. Calcada / W.L. Williams.

LOFAR Captures Most Detailed Images Ever Seen of Distant Galaxies

Aug 19, 2021 by News Staff

Using data from the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR), a radio telescope that operates at frequencies between 10 and 240 MHz and consists of 52 stations spread...

Wilkins et al. observed bright flares of X-ray emissions, produced as gas falls into a supermassive black hole in I Zwicky 1; the flares echoed off of the gas falling into the black hole, and as the flares were subsiding, short flashes of X-rays were seen -- corresponding to the reflection of the flares from the far side of the disk, bent around the black hole by its strong gravitational field. Image credit: Dan Wilkins.

Astronomers Detect Light Echoes Coming from Behind Supermassive Black Hole

Jul 30, 2021 by News Staff

Using ESA’s XMM-Newton and NASA’s NuSTAR space telescopes, astronomers have observed X-ray flares emitted from around the supermassive black hole in...

The new highest resolution EHT image of the Centaurus A’s jet launching region. Image credit: R. Bors / CSIRO / ATNF / Feain et al. / Morganti et al. / Junkes et al. / ESO / WFI / MPIfR / APEX / Weiß et al. / NASA / CXC / CfA / Kraft et al. / TANAMI / Müller et al. / EHT / Janssen et al.

Event Horizon Telescope Captures Image of Centaurus A’s Black Hole Jet

Jul 20, 2021 by Natali Anderson

Astronomers from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration have imaged a jet in the heart of the nearby radio galaxy Centaurus A and identified the...

Siraj & Loeb explore the possibility that accretion flares resulting from the tidal disruption of small Oort Cloud bodies by a putative primordial black hole could power an observable optical signal that could be searched for with the upcoming Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time. Image credit: Sci-News.com / Zdeněk Bardon / ESO.

Does Self-Interacting Dark Matter Produce Seed Black Holes?

Jun 21, 2021 by News Staff

Astrophysical observations show that supermassive black holes exist when the Universe is just 800 million years old after the Big Bang (just 6% of its...

An artist’s impression of a galactic wind driven by a supermassive black hole located in the center of a galaxy. Image credit: ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO.

ALMA Detects Powerful Black-Hole Wind in Distant Quasar

Jun 17, 2021 by News Staff

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have detected a galactic-scale supermassive black hole-driven wind in HSC J124353.93+010038.5...

Sloan Digital Sky Survey archival image from March 2004 (left) and the image from the observation campaign of B2 1420+32 taken by Mishra et al. in January 2020 using ASAS-SN (right); the blazar’s brightness increased by a factor of 100. Image credit: SDSS / Mishra et al., doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/abf63d.

‘Changing-Look’ Blazar Spotted 6.3 Billion Light-Years Away

Jun 14, 2021 by News Staff

Astronomers have performed photometric and spectroscopic observations of B2 1420+32, a blazar with a collection of ‘changing-look’ features. Sloan...

This image shows Markarian 739, a pair of merging galaxies some 425 million light-years away in the constellation of Leo. Image credit: ESO / Tubín et al., doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/abedba.

Astronomers Observe Nearby Galaxy with Two Bright Cores

Apr 27, 2021 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers using the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have performed spectroscopic observations...

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

Astronomers Discover Two Very Distant Double Quasars

Apr 7, 2021 by News Staff

The two newly-discovered pairs of quasars, J0749+2255 and J0841+4825, existed 10 billion years ago and resided in the cores of merging galaxies, according...

This EHT image shows the polarized view of the black hole in Messier 87. The lines mark the orientation of polarization, which is related to the magnetic field around the shadow of the black hole. Image credit: EHT Collaboration.

EHT Captures Polarized-Light Image of Messier 87’s Supermassive Black Hole

Mar 24, 2021 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,...

This image shows the Sb-type spiral galaxy SDSS J043703.67+245606.8. Image credit: Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

Wandering Supermassive Black Hole Detected in Distant Spiral Galaxy

Mar 12, 2021 by News Staff

Using the Arecibo and Gemini observatories, astronomers have detected a mobile supermassive black hole in a galaxy called SDSS J043703.67+245606.8 (hereafter...

An artist’s illustration of a close-up view of a quasar and its jet, like the one in PJ352-52. Image credit: NASA / CXC / M. Weiss.

Chandra Spots Extremely Long Cosmic Jet in Early Universe

Mar 10, 2021 by News Staff

The source of the 160,000-light-year-long jet of particles is PSO J352.4034-15.3373 (PJ352-15 for short), a rapidly growing supermassive black hole, or...

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