October 22, 2013 NGC 4395, a spiral galaxy in Canes Venatici Image Credit & Copyright: Dieter Beer & Patrick Hochleitner NGC 4395 is an unbarred spiral galaxy of some 55 thousand light-years across that lies around 15 million light-years away from Earth in the northern constellation of Canes Venatici (the Hunting Dogs), while it is receding [continue reading]
CfA astronomers made a remarkable and fortuitous discovery in 2005: an extremely fast moving star, clocked going over three million kilometers an hour. It appears to have been ejected from the vicinity of the galactic center’s supermassive black hole around 80 million years ago by powerful gravitational effects as it swung past the black [continue reading]
February 16, 2013 NGC 1399, an elliptical galaxy in Fornax Image Credit: NASA/CXC/UA/J. Irwin et al. NGC 1399 is an elliptical galaxy of about 54,000 light-years across that lies 60 – 65 million light-years away in the southern constellation of Fornax, while it moves away from us at roughly 1422 kilometers per second. It is [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]
November 3, 2012 ESO 243-49, a large spiral galaxy in Phoenix Image Credit: NASA, ESA and S. Farrell (University of Sydney) ESO 243-49 is a large edge-on spiral galaxy, located about 290 million light-years away from Earth in the southern constellation Phoenix. It is speeding away from us at about 6639 kilometers per second. Towards [continue reading]
A research team at Keio University, led by Associate Professor Tomoharu Oka, has discovered intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH) candidates at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. It is about 30,000 light-years from the solar system in the direction of Sagittarius. IMBH candidates are considered to be the “seeds” that form and grow supermassive [continue reading]