Step aside, Shark Week. NASA’s Black Hole Week is our favorite celebration of really cool (and sometimes terrifying) things. This year, it’s starting us on quite a beautiful note with a new Hubble Space Telescope image of the dazzling spiral galaxy NGC 4951, located 50 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. Peaceful? At first […]
Scientists have used artificial intelligence to construct a three-dimensional model of an energetic outburst, or flare, that occurred around the Milky Way’s central black hole, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). This 3D model could help scientists develop a clearer picture of the tumultuous environment that forms around supermassive black holes in general. The material swirling around […]
A new investigation into a rare and short-lived type of galaxy has revealed that such objects harbor slumbering supermassive black holes that briefly awaken to rip apart a massive star and devour its remains as a giant cosmic breakfast. “Compact Symmetric Objects,” or CSOs, are active galaxies that have two jets blasting out from them […]
A hiccuping supermassive black hole has alerted astronomers to a whole new type of black hole behavior. In 2020, a previously quiet black hole at the heart of a galaxy about 800 million light-years from Earth, and with a mass equivalent to 50 million suns, suddenly erupted, brightening the material around it by a factor of […]
Astronomers have captured the first view of polarized light and the magnetic fields that surround Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milly Way. The historic observation made with the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has revealed the neatly ordered magnetic fields have similarities with those that surround the supermassive […]
A striking new image of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy has revealed the strong magnetic field that surrounds it, twisting and turning like a spiral. It’s a never-before-seen view of Sagittarius A* (or Sgr A*), the immense black hole at the Milky Way’s core that gobbles up nearby light and […]
Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have discovered an “extremely red” supermassive black hole growing in the shadowy, early universe. The red hue of the supermassive black hole, seen as it was around 700 million years after the Big Bang, is the result of the expanding universe. As the universe balloons outward in […]
Astronomers have observed a supermassive black hole in Earth’s cosmic backyard as it blasts out jets of matter at near-light speeds. These outflows tell the tale of a battle for supremacy between magnetism and gravity. The discovery could help scientists better understand how black holes feed on matter and eject powerful jets that extend far […]
NASA scientists have observed a stunning cosmic fossil that was created when a supermassive black hole erupted over 5 million years ago. The team at the space agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center used the X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission (XMM-Newton) space telescope with help from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to spot the  X-rays that outline cold gas clouds in […]