Credit: PixabayIn 2024, a system designed to detect sudden brightening events discovered something strange. However, the automated system meant to identify the object couldn't determine what it was observing. Nearly a year later, we know it was the first tidal disruption event—where a star is torn apart by a supermassive black hole—seen in visible...
An illustration shows hot spots in the disk swirling around the Milky Way's central black hole. (NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford/STScI)NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has revealed an unexpected cosmic light show around Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Although not as ravenous as other black holes...
An image of the spiral galaxy NGC 1086 obtained by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). The galaxy has a distance of 47 million light-years and is one of the nearest galaxies with an active galactic nucleus. Credit: European Southern ObservatoryThis advancement provides unparalleled insight into the dynamic processes surrounding supermassive black...
NASA Observes Black Hole Jet Colliding with Mysterious ObjectOne of the most peculiar galaxies near the Milky Way has presented astronomers with a new and intriguing mysteryKnown as Centaurus A, this galaxy hosts a supermassive black hole at its center that emits enormous jets of plasma. These jets, traveling through intergalactic space, have collided...
An artist's impression of a star circling a supermassive black hole, a repeating event that seems to be at the core of AT2018fykNASA/CXC/M. WeissAstronomers have observed a supermassive black hole consume a star in two phases and have predicted when it might take a third. If it happens, it could create a fascinating cosmic...
An artist's impression of the brightest object ever discovered – a quasar that shines with the light of 500 trillion Suns – which is also the fastest growing black hole, eating the equivalent of a Sun a dayESO/M. KornmesserOne might expect that locating the brightest object in the observable universe would be straightforward, but...
An artist's impression of what the system might look like if the object is a black hole. (Daniëlle Futselaar/artsource.nl)Something unusual is happening at the edges of the Milky Way. In a star cluster on the outskirts of our galaxy, astronomers have spotted a compact object engaged in an orbital dance with a millisecond pulsar. They...
The world of science is everchanging and progressive. Every day a new scientific discovery is made. Here are some of the most relevant this year:Consumption of Microplastics Can Cause Evolutionary ChangesAfter the non-biting midges of the species Chironomus riparius were exposed to microplastics, the genome of subsequent generations changed. Credit: Markus PfenningerIn April 2022,...
The ultra-faint Milky Way companion galaxy Leo I appears as a faint patch to the right of the bright star, Regulus. Credit: Scott Anttila Anttler2 astrophysicists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have proposed a method to see what could be the second-closest supermassive black hole to Planet: a behemoth three million times the...
