Astronomers have detected some strange objects at the center of the Milky Way. They look like ordinary clouds of gas, but seem to have a solid core that keeps them together. The truth may lie somewhere in-between. These G-objects, as they’re known, seem to be stars hiding under puffy shrouds of dust
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A new computer model could help astronomers to interpret the radiation emitted by supermassive black holes as they rip apart and devour unfortunate stars. These extreme "feeding" episodes are known as Tidal Disruption Events (TDEs), and are thought to be incredibly rare.
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Astronomers at Australian National University have spotted a black hole so bright that were it in our home galaxy, it would outshine all the stars in the sky. This supermassive monster also happens to be the fastest-growing black hole ever seen, devouring the equivalent of the Sun every two days.
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Scientists have long searched for proof of the decades-old theory that black holes surround the supermassive black hole at the heart of our galaxy. By tweaking their approach just a little, astronomers have now turned up the first direct evidence that they do in fact exist.
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Black holes can be anywhere from a few times the mass of the Sun up to millions of times that, but some even bigger than that. A new study of data gathered by NASA’s Chandra X-ray telescope has found these so-called “ultramassive” black holes may be larger and more common than we thought.
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Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observatory in Chile have imaged a very active black hole at the center of spiral galaxy M77, which is apparently feasting on the universe’s largest donut.
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A newly released 360-degree video lets you explore the galactic center of the Milky Way from the perspective of the supermassive black hole at the heart of our galaxy, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*).
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At a distance of about 13 billion lightyears, the most distant supermassive black hole known so far has been spotted. That incredible distance means it dates back to when the first stars blinked on, which raises the question of how a black hole that big arose so soon after the universe began.
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With intense gravity and radiation, the region around the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy was thought to be too harsh for star formation. But now almost a dozen young rebellious stars have been spotted there anyway, triggering a rethink of our understanding of how stars are born.
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The precise instruments at the LIGO and Virgo facilities were responsible for past detections of gravitational waves, but now astronomers plan to look for ripples from supermassive black hole collisions using natural detectors in space: pulsars, the “cosmic lighthouses” of the sky.
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