The giant galaxy around the giant black hole

On April 10, 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) unveiled the first-ever image of a black hole's event horizon, the area beyond which light cannot escape the immense gravity of the black hole. That giant black hole, with ...

Seeds of giant galaxies formed in the early universe

Modern galaxies show a wide diversity, including dwarf galaxies, irregular galaxies, spiral galaxies, and massive elliptical galaxies. This final type, massive elliptical galaxies, provides astronomers with a puzzle. Although ...

Magnetic fields may be the key to black hole activity

Collimated jets provide astronomers with some of the most powerful evidence that a supermassive black hole lurks in the heart of most galaxies. Some of these black holes appear to be active, gobbling up material from their ...

The fading ghost of a long-dead star

Thin, red veins of energized gas mark the location of one of the larger supernova remnants in the Milky Way galaxy in this image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

Obscured supermassive black holes in galaxies

Most if not all galaxies are thought to host a supermassive black hole in their nuclei. It grows by accreting mass, and while feeding it is not hidden from our view: it generates X-ray emission and ultraviolet that heats ...

VISTA peeks through the Small Magellanic Cloud's dusty veil

VISTA's infrared capabilities have now allowed astronomers to see the myriad of stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy much more clearly than ever before. The result is this record-breaking imageā€”the biggest infrared ...

Outflowing gas in ultraluminous galaxies

Galaxies evolve over billions of years in part through the activity of star formation and their supermassive nuclear black holes, and also by mergers with other galaxies. Some features of galaxies, in particular the strong ...

Astronomers uncover hidden stellar birthplace

A team of astronomers from the University of Manchester, the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy and the University of Bonn have uncovered a hidden stellar birthplace in a nearby spiral galaxy, using a telescope in Chile. ...

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