Active galactic nuclei (AGN) are supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies that are accreting material onto their hot circumnuclear disks, releasing the energy in bursts of radiation or as particle jets moving at close to the speed of light. These energetic outbursts in turn drive outflows of ionized, neutral, and molecular gas that can extend over thousands of light-years…
Tag: the black hole
The Black Hole at the Center of the Galaxy Is Forging a Strange New Kind of Star
The black hole at the center of the Milky Way may be warping and combining binary stars into a strange new kind of object, according to a new study. Source: https://www.livescience.com/milky-way-black-hole-merges-binary-stars.html
New view of Milky Way’s center
The SOFIA flying telescope has captured a new panoramic image of the center of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. The image shows a region more than 600 light-years across, revealing unprecedented details within the center’s dense swirls of gas and dust. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/new-image-milky-way-center-sofia-video…
Famous black hole has jet pushing cosmic speed limit
The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration released the first image of a black hole with observations of the massive, dark object at the center of Messier 87, or M87, last April. This black hole has a mass of about 6.5 billion times that of the sun and is located about 55 million light years from Earth. The black hole has been called…
Astronomers describe a violent black hole outburst that provides new insight into galaxy cluster evolution
Billions of years ago, in the center of a galaxy cluster far, far away (15 billion light-years, to be exact), a black hole spewed out jets of plasma. As the plasma rushed out of the black hole, it pushed away material, creating two large cavities 180 degrees from each other. In the same way you can calculate the energy of an…
‘Monster’ Black Hole Announced Last Week Is Nothing Special
The Bad Astronomer writes: Last week, scientists announced the discovery of a stellar-mass black hole with 70 times the Sun’s mass, far heftier than theory predicts they can get. Within days, though, four separate papers have come out casting extreme doubt on the claim. They show that the data wasn’t processed correctly, and that the black hole is closer to Earth…
Astronomers Find the Biggest Black Hole Ever Measured
“Astronomers have found the biggest black hole ever measured — it’s 40 billion times the sun’s mass, or roughly two-thirds the mass of all stars in the Milky Way,” writes Astronomy.com. Iwastheone shares their report: The gargantuan black hole lurks in a galaxy that’s supermassive itself and probably formed from the collisions of at least eight smaller galaxies. Holm 15A is…
Hefty black hole holds new record for most mass
Astronomers have discovered a black hole with 40 billion solar masses in the heart of the Abell 85 cluster of galaxies Source: https://earthsky.org/space/astronomers-discover-heaviest-black-hole-abell85-nearby-universe…
Did this huge black hole swallow a star from the inside out?
A recently discovered black hole in a distant spiral arm of the Milky Way, 70 times as heavy as the sun, might have swallowed a star from the inside out, and scientists are baffled. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/did-huge-black-hole-lb1-swallow-star-from-inside-out…
Thousands of exoplanets may orbit supermassive black holes
It sounds unbelievable, but a new study from Kagoshima University and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan says that exoplanets – thousands of them – could be orbiting supermassive black holes. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/thousands-of-exoplanets-may-orbit-supermassive-black-holes…