Tag: supermassive black hole

Stars very close to the center of our galaxy could be fueled by dark matter in perpetuity, according to a team of astronomers who recently studied the distant light sources.…

Five years ago, a galaxy 300 million light-years away got a lot brighter in telescopes, radiating ultraviolet, optical, and infrared light out into space. This year, the resurgent galaxy started…

A team of astronomers has spotted the most distant merging galactic cores yet, seen as they were when the universe was less than a billion years old. The duo of…

An artist’s impression of Gilese 12 b in orbit around its red dwarf host star.Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (Caltech-IPAC) A newly discovered exoplanet, with its surface temperature estimated to be remarkably…

A team of astronomers has managed to calculate the speed of a distant supermassive black hole’s spin thanks to the object’s chance meeting with a star—which it promptly destroyed. How…

If you were having a bad day, plunging into a black hole would be enough to really top it off. Apparently, you’d experience a process known as “spaghettification” in which…

The supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy is the undisputed heavyweight champion of the Milky Way, but a newly spotted object takes the crown for the most…

A new image of our galaxy’s central black hole reveals the magnetic field surrounding the object in polarized light. The image reveals how gas and superheated matter in the immediate…

If you want to stay grounded—which is to say, you want a haunting reminder of your own diminutive size and mortality—do I have the tool for you. Meet Galactic Compass:…

Our Sun is about 330,000 times the mass of Earth, yet it is dwarfed by the black holes that lurk at the centers of galaxies. A team of astronomers recently…