Black hole

Astronomers have discovered a galaxy with strange clouds orbiting its supermassive black hole. Rather than all circling in the same direction, NGC 1068 has two rings that orbit in opposite directions – and that may answer a long-standing mystery.

By training a pair of instruments on a nearby black hole, a team of astronomers have now produced a high-frame rate visualization of violent flares at its center in the kind of detail never seen before.

Nowadays, the Milky Way is a pretty quiet galaxy – but just a few million years ago its central black hole sent off huge flares of radiation.

NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has observed a gigantic black hole ripping apart a star in a distant galaxy.

This intriguing NASA visualization shows how the powerful gravitational influence of a black hole dramatically warps the light emitted from material spiraling towards its event horizon.

Astronomers have spotted an event that was thought to happen over millennia play out in a matter of months, as a usually-quiet galaxy suddenly fired up into an energetic quasar – and not just once, but in six different cases.

Astronomers have studied the ringing tones of a newly-created black hole for the first time, proving Einstein right once again.

Given their name, black holes aren’t the kind of places you’d expect to see much light. But sometimes flashes of light are seen as the black holes snack on gas and dust. Earlier this year though the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy flared up in an unprecedented light show, and astronomers don’t really know why.

Back in April the world got its first direct glimpse of a black hole. Now the team behind this historic work is being awarded a Breakthrough Prize.

In NGC 6946, better known as the Fireworks galaxy, an extremely bright flare of X-rays was seen to appear and disappear within a matter of weeks.

Astronomers have detected a gravitational wave signal that appears to be caused by a black hole swallowing a neutron star. Aside from being an incredible cosmic cataclysm to witness, this detection is important for another reason: it may be the final point in the gravitational wave trifecta.

Hubble has discovered a structure around a black hole thought to be impossible. A small, “malnourished” black hole has a disk of material circling it – a feature thought unique to supermassive black holes. This disc is also so close to the black hole that it’s distorting and stretching the light.