What is a quasar?

A quasar is an extremely bright and distant point-like source visible to radio telescopes. The source is a so-called Active Galactic Nucleus, fueled by a supermassive black hole. Source: https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/definition-what-is-a-quasar…

What is the Milky Way?

When someone says “Milky Way,” do you think of the starry pathway across our sky, or of the great pinwheel-shaped galaxy in space? Both are correct! Source: https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/what-is-the-milky-way-galaxy…

Earth faster, closer to Milky Way black hole, than previously thought

A new survey of our galaxy by astronomers with VERA in Japan has shown that Earth is both moving faster and is closer to the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy than previously thought. But don’t worry, our planet is safe! Source: https://earthsky.org/space/earth-faster-closer-to-milky-way-central-black-hole…

Researchers Calculate Earth is 2,000 Light-years Closer to the Milky Way’s Black Hole

“Earth just got 7 km/s faster and about 2000 light-years closer to the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy,” reports Phys.org: But don’t worry, this doesn’t mean that our planet is plunging towards the black hole. Instead the changes are results of a better model of the Milky Way Galaxy based on new observation data, including…

How the world came to understand black holes

Earlier this month, Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel, and Andrea Ghez split the 2020 physics Nobel Prize for decades of work on black holes. Click here to learn more about their monumental achievement and about the history of our understanding of these exotic objects in space. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/nobel-prize-3-astrophysicists-black-holess-penrose-genzel-ghez…

Innovative model provides insight into the behavior of the black hole at the center of our galaxy

Like most galaxies, the Milky Way hosts a supermassive black hole at its center. Called Sagittarius A*, the object has captured astronomers’ curiosity for decades. And now there is an effort to image it directly. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-06-insight-behavior-black-hole-center.html…

ALMA spots the twinkling heart of our Milky Way

Astronomers used the ALMA telescope in Chile to observe irregular flickers in millimeter-waves from the center of our Milky Way galaxy: the twinkling heart of the galaxy. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/alma-gaseous-disk-black-hole-milky-way…

ESO Finds Star’s Orbit Around Black Hole Confirms Einstein’s General Relativity

puddingebola shares a report from ESO: Observations made with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have revealed for the first time that a star orbiting the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way moves just as predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Its orbit is shaped like a rosette and not like an ellipse as predicted by Newton’s…

‘Strange objects’ spotted at the galactic core

Scientists have discovered a new type of object that is so weird that it has been assigned a whole new class. Found orbiting Sagittarius A* – the supe… Source: https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/333826/strange-objects-spotted-at-the-galactic-core…

Astronomers discover class of strange objects near our galaxy’s enormous black hole

Astronomers from UCLA’s Galactic Center Orbits Initiative have discovered a new class of bizarre objects at the center of our galaxy, not far from the supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A*. They published their research today in the journal Nature. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-01-astronomers-class-strange-galaxy-enormous.html…