Astronomers measure heaviest black hole pair ever found

Using archival data from the Gemini North telescope, a team of astronomers has measured the heaviest pair of supermassive black holes ever found. The merging of two supermassive black holes is a phenomenon that has long been ...

Astronomers discover closest black hole to Earth

Black holes are the most extreme objects in the universe. Supermassive versions of these unimaginably dense objects likely reside at the centers of all large galaxies. Stellar-mass black holes—which weigh approximately ...

Potential first traces of the universe's earliest stars

The very first stars likely formed when the universe was only 100 million years old, less than one percent its current age. These first stars—known as Population III—were so titanically massive that when they ended their ...

Colliding galaxies dazzle in Gemini North image

An evocative new image captured by the Gemini North telescope in Hawai'i reveals a pair of interacting spiral galaxies—NGC 4568 and NGC 4567—as they begin to clash and merge. These galaxies are entangled by their mutual ...

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