ESA’s Herschel space observatory has made detailed observations of surprisingly hot molecular gas that may be orbiting or falling towards the supermassive black hole lurking at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. The environment at the centre of our Milky Way Galaxy. The Galactic Centre hosts a supermassive black hole in the region known as [continue reading]
Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have discovered signs of star formation perilously close to the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. If confirmed, this would be the first time that star formation was observed so close to the galactic center. A combined ALMA and Very Large [continue reading]
Astronomers have watched as a supermassive black hole woke up from a decades-long slumber to feed on a low-mass object – either a brown dwarf or a giant planet – that strayed too close. A similar feeding event, albeit on a gas cloud, will soon happen at the black hole at the center of our own [continue reading]
March 11, 2013 The Great Barred Spiral Galaxy in Fornax Image Credit & Copyright: Martin Pugh Astrophotography (http://www.martinpughastrophotography.id.au/) NGC 1365, also known as the Great Barred Spiral Galaxy, is, as you would have guessed by its nickname, a huge barred spiral galaxy. It is over 200,000 light-years across, what makes it one of the largest [continue reading]
These days the core of the Milky Way galaxy is a pretty tame place…cosmically speaking. The galactic supermassive black hole at the center is a sleeping giant. Existing stars are peacefully circling. Although conditions are favorable, there doesn’t even seem to be much new star formation going on. Artist’s conception of satellite galaxy being pulled into [continue reading]
Two X-ray space observatories, NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) and the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton, have teamed up to measure definitively, for the first time, the spin rate of a black hole with a mass 2 million times that of our Sun. This artist’s concept illustrates a supermassive black hole with millions to [continue reading]