In a letter to Nature, an international team of astronomers, including Marc Sarzi from the University of Hertfordshire, report the exciting discovery of a new way to measure the mass of supermassive black holes in galaxies. By measuring the speed with which carbon monoxide molecules orbit around such black holes, this new research opens [continue reading]
Astronomers from Swinburne University of Technology have discovered how supermassive black holes grow – and it’s not what was expected. A black hole in a star cluster. Image Credit: Gabriel Perez Diaz For years, scientists had believed that supermassive black holes, located at the centers of galaxies, increased their mass in step with the growth of their [continue reading]
Galaxies have a voracious appetite for fuel — in this case, fresh gas — but astronomers have had difficulty finding the pristine gas that should be falling onto galaxies. Now, scientists have provided direct empirical evidence for these gas flows using new observations from the Hubble Space Telescope. The team led by Nicolas Lehner, [continue reading]
December 9, 2012 HCG 87, a group of galaxies in Capricornus Image Credit: The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA/NASA) Hickson Compact Group 87 is a small group of gravitational bound galaxies, located about 400 million light-years away in the constellation of Capricornus. A Hickson Compact Group (HCG for short) is a collection of four or five [continue reading]
Australia’s newest radio telescope is predicted to find an unprecedented 700,000 new galaxies, say scientists planning for CSIRO’s (1) next-generation Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP). The simulated galaxies ASKAP surveys WALLABY and DINGO. WALLABY will survey a large portion of the sky and is predicted to find 600,000 new galaxies. DINGO will survey a smaller section [continue reading]
The Calar Alto Legacy Integral Field Area survey (CALIFA survey) has published a first set of data, offering views of one hundred galaxies in the local Universe at an unprecedented level of detail. This colour-magnitude diagram of 151 galaxies observed by CALIFA arranges galaxies by their colour and their brightness (magnitude). For each galaxy [continue reading]