News tagged with galactic center

Related topics: black holes

Ghostly gamma-ray beams blast from Milky Way's center

(Phys.org) -- As galaxies go, our Milky Way is pretty quiet. Active galaxies have cores that glow brightly, powered by supermassive black holes swallowing material, and often spit twin jets in opposite directions. ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created May 29, 2012 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (10) | comments 13 | with audio podcast

A planetary system that never was teaches about those that may be

While Kepler and similar missions are turning up planets by the fist full, there’s long been many places that astronomers haven’t expected to find planetary systems. The main places include regions ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created May 23, 2012 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (2) | comments 1

X-ray quasars, and a distance record

Quasars are thought to be galaxies whose bright nuclei contain massive black holes around which disks are actively accreting matter. The accretion process releases vast amounts of energy, often including a ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Apr 30, 2012 | popularity 3 / 5 (3) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Runaway planets zoom at a fraction of light speed

Seven years ago, astronomers boggled when they found the first runaway star flying out of our Galaxy at a speed of 1.5 million miles per hour. The discovery intrigued theorists, who wondered: If a star can ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Mar 22, 2012 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (18) | comments 22 | with audio podcast

The origins of a torus in a galactic nucleus

(PhysOrg.com) -- Quasars are among the most energetic objects in the universe, with some of them as luminous as ten thousand Milky Way galaxies. Quasars are thought to have massive black holes at their cores, ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Mar 13, 2012 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (3) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

2012: Shadow of the Dark Rift

(PhysOrg.com) -- One of the most bizarre theories about 2012 has built up with very little attention to facts. This idea holds that a cosmic alignment of the sun, Earth, the center of our galaxy -- or perhaps ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Dec 22, 2011 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (15) | comments 32 | with audio podcast

Hubble mosaic of the Galactic center

(PhysOrg.com) -- This NASA Hubble Space Telescope infrared mosaic image represents the sharpest survey of the Galactic Center to date. It reveals a new population of massive stars and new details in complex ...

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Oct 10, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (7) | comments 4

Living in the galactic danger zone

We know for certain that life exists in the Milky Way galaxy: that life is us. Scientists are continually looking to understand more about how life on our planet came to be and the conditions that must be ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Sep 23, 2011 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (8) | comments 12 | with audio podcast

Twisted ring of gas orbits galactic center

The Herschel Space Observatory scanned the center of the galaxy in far-infrared and found a cool (in all senses of the word) twisting ring of rapidly orbiting gas clouds. The ring is estimated to have dimensions ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Jun 01, 2011 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (9) | comments 3

Newly merged black hole eagerly shreds stars

A galaxy's core is a busy place, crowded with stars swarming around an enormous black hole. When galaxies collide, it gets even messier as the two black holes spiral toward each other, merging to make an even ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Apr 08, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (10) | comments 8 | with audio podcast

Milky Way stars move in mysterious ways

Rather than moving in circles around the center of the Milky Way, all the stars in our Galaxy are travelling along different paths, moving away from the Galactic center. This has just been evidenced by Arnaud ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Nov 30, 2010 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (27) | comments 22 | with audio podcast

Fermi telescope discovers new giant structure in our galaxy (w/ Video)

(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has unveiled a previously unseen structure centered in the Milky Way. The feature spans 50,000 light-years and may be the remnant of an eruption from ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Nov 09, 2010 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (55) | comments 43 | with audio podcast

NASA's SOFIA will likely help solve mysteries about our galaxy

(PhysOrg.com) -- How were millions of young stars able to form at the center of our Milky Way galaxy in the presence of an enormous black hole with a mass 4 million times that of the sun? This and other important ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Aug 26, 2010 | popularity 5 / 5 (4) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Hyperfast Star Was Booted from Milky Way

(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has detected a hypervelocity star - a rare entity moving three times faster than our sun.

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Jul 22, 2010 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (25) | comments 10 | with audio podcast

The turbulent past of the Milky Way's black hole

The supermassive black hole at the center of our Galaxy went through turbulent times over the past centuries. We know this thanks to its surrounding molecular clouds, whose varying X-ray and gamma-ray luminosity ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created May 28, 2010 | popularity 5 / 5 (4) | comments 4