Items tagged with Black Hole

Astronomers believe they have detected some of the best evidence yet of a rare intermediate-sized black hole lurking at the heart of a globular star cluster. The discovery of the mid-sized black hole located 6,000 light-years from Earth was made using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Typically, black holes come in... Read more...
Astronomers spotted an intergalactic explosion 10 times brighter than any recorded supernova (exploding star). The event, called AT2021lwx, was first detected in 2020 and is believed to be the largest explosion ever recorded. The event was at first thought to be unremarkable, due to the fact there was no indication... Read more...
NASA has shared an animation that attempts to put the colossal size of supermassive black holes into perspective. There are more than 100 of these mammoth black holes, such as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) at the center of our very own Milky Way, confirmed by direct measurements. While there are smaller black holes that... Read more...
A team of researchers has shown off a new machine-learning technique by enhancing the Event Horizon Telescope's images of a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy 55 million light-years from Earth. The technique, called PRIMO, enhances the fidelity and sharpness of radio interferometry images. The Event... Read more...
A Yale astronomer spotted a 200,000-light-year-long bridge connecting a runaway black hole to the galaxy it is attempting to escape from. The supermassive black hole, weighing more than 20 million Suns, is traveling so fast that it could travel from Earth to the Moon in 14 minutes. The bridge first appeared to be a... Read more...
The European Space Agency's (ESA) Gaia mission has helped to unveil a new family of black holes, and its newest members are closer to Earth than any other known black hole. Gaia BH1 and Gaia BH2 are respectively located approximately 1560 light-years away from Earth in the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus and... Read more...
The European Space Agency (ESA) shared an image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope that has NASA and others stumped on how to give it one tidy label. It seems the luminous object located about 390 million light years from Earth is a bit too complex to be placed in a single box. Scientists like to be able to... Read more...
Following two decades of monitoring a dusty gas filament (known as X7) from W. M. Keck Observatory, astronomers believe the cloud will eventually get pulled toward Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) and later "cause some fireworks" as it gets consumed by the supermassive black hole. Astronomers project that Sgr A* will... Read more...
A global team of scientists using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has gotten a glimpse into the heart of a distant quasar. Quasars are extremely luminous cosmic monsters located at the center of distant galaxies, powered by supermassive black holes. The light captured in these images is said to have traveled toward... Read more...
A group of scientists have proposed evidence that black holes are what produce dark energy. The new work potentially means nothing needs to be added to what we already know about the Universe to account for dark energy, in that black holes along with Einstein's gravity are the source. The team of 17 researchers... Read more...
Astronomers spotted an unexpected trail in the gas surrounding a dwarf galaxy while using the Hubble Space Telescope. During the team's observations, a trail of an ejected supermassive black hole is believed to have been detected. The light emitting from the trail traveled more than 7.5 billion years to reach Earth... Read more...
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured a star's final moments in incredible detail as it gets devoured by a black hole. The black hole lurked in the distance until the woeful star wandered by. Once the star was close enough, the black hole's gravitational grasp reeled it in and tore it apart, feeding on the star's... Read more...
A team of scientists has unveiled the secret to a burping black hole with the Green Bank Telescope (GBT). The new study reveals new information about mysterious radio bubbles surrounding a supermassive black hole. Supermassive black holes are tremendously dense objects buried in the hearts of galaxies, while... Read more...
NASA's Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) has helped astronomers gain insight into finding the best explanation for how particles in jets perpendicular to black holes get accelerated to such high energies. The latest study explains that the best explanation for particle acceleration is a shock wave within the... Read more...
An intermediate-mass black hole was recently discovered devouring an unsuspecting star that got a bit too close, producing a flair of radiation that outshined even the combined stellar light of the host dwarf galaxy. The destruction of the star is known as a "tidal disruption event", or TDE, and could help scientists... Read more...
Astronomers have discovered the closest-known black hole to Earth, at just 1600 light-years away. It is also the first clear detection of a dormant stellar-mass black hole in the Milky Way. Stellar-mass black holes typically weigh in at approximately five to 100 times the mass of our Sun. These types of black holes... Read more...
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured the aftermath of a collision between two neutron stars, which sent a jet of radiation hurtling through space at nearly the speed of light. Hubble was used to measure the motion of a "blob" of material the resulting jet smashed into. A neutron star is the surviving core of... Read more...
NASA's extremely powerful Webb telescope has helped researchers unveil at least three galaxies merging 11.5 billion years ago. The swirling galaxies are seen around a red quasar in a 'monster' black hole. A team at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) were able to discover "a cluster of galaxies merging together around a... Read more...
New research seems to indicate a giant gas bubble is circling the Milky Way's supermassive black hole. Astronomers believe the hot bubble of gas is about the size of the planet Mercury, and makes a full lap around the black hole in just 70 minutes. "This requires a mind-blowing velocity of about 30 percent of the... Read more...
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope continues to deliver, by providing the first direct evidence of a lone black hole in interstellar space. Up until now, all black hole masses have been "inferred statistically", through interactions in binary systems, or in the cores of galaxies. As the James Webb Space Telescope nears... Read more...
Astronomers in Japan have discovered faint radio emissions covering a gigantic galaxy with an energetic black hole at its center for the first time ever. The team hopes the new finding will help unlock how black holes interact with its host galaxies by utilizing the same technique with other quasars. A quasar is... Read more...
Researchers led by a team at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have detected a wealth of previously unnoticed supermassive black holes in dwarf galaxies. The new information could lend valuable insight into the origin story of our very own Milky Way galaxy. The Milky Way galaxy is believed to have... Read more...
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