Large amounts of gas are sometimes funneled to a galaxy's nuclear regions, with profound consequences. The gas triggers starburst activity and can also feed the supermassive black hole, converting it into an active galactic ...
Astronomy
May 7, 2021
20
2605
NASA has a long tradition of unexpected discoveries, and the space program's TESS mission is no different. SMU astrophysicist and her team have discovered a particularly bright gamma-ray burst using a NASA telescope designed ...
Astronomy
Apr 30, 2021
0
98
For decades astronomers have been spotting bursts of electromagnetic radiation coming from black holes. They assumed those are the result of stars being torn apart, but they have never seen the silhouette of the actual material ...
Astronomy
Apr 23, 2021
4
1634
A pair of orbiting black holes millions of times the Sun's mass perform a hypnotic pas de deux in a new NASA visualization. The movie traces how the black holes distort and redirect light emanating from the maelstrom of hot ...
Astronomy
Apr 15, 2021
3
14451
In April 2019, scientists released the first image of a black hole in galaxy M87 using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). However, that remarkable achievement was just the beginning of the science story to be told.
Astronomy
Apr 14, 2021
13
10902
An international team of astronomers has investigated an extremely luminous infrared galaxy known as WISEJ090924.01+000211.1 (or WISEJ0909+0002 for short) as part of the eROSITA final equatorial depth survey (eFEDS). Results ...
All supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies appear to have periods when they swallow matter from their close surroundings. But that is about as far as the similarities go. That's the conclusion reached by British ...
Astronomy
Apr 13, 2021
3
4110
The luminous heart of the galaxy M61 dominates this image, framed by its winding spiral arms threaded with dark tendrils of dust. As well as the usual bright bands of stars, the spiral arms of M61 are studded with ruby-red ...
Astronomy
Apr 9, 2021
1
685
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is "seeing double." Peering back 10 billion years into the universe's past, Hubble astronomers found a pair of quasars that are so close to each other they look like a single object in ground-based ...
Astronomy
Apr 6, 2021
11
8578
A new black hole breaks the record—not for being the smallest or the biggest—but for being right in the middle.
Astronomy
Mar 29, 2021
8
6035
