Remove this ad

sgr a

How do Hypervelocity Stars End up Breaking The Speed Limit?

June 4, 2013

Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter The Sun is racing through the Galaxy at a speed that is 30 times greater than a space shuttle in orbit (clocking in at 220 km/s with respect to the galactic center). Most stars within the Milky Way travel at a [...]

Read the full article →

Galactic Gas Cloud Could Help Spot Hidden Black Holes

February 15, 2013

The heart of our Milky Way galaxy is an exotic place. It’s swarming with gigantic stars, showered by lethal blasts of high-energy radiation and a veritable cul-de-sac for the most enigmatic stellar corpses known to science: black holes. And at the center of the whole mélange is the granddaddy of all the black holes in [...]

Read the full article →

Black Hole Jets Might Be Molded by Magnetism

December 4, 2012

Visible-light Hubble image of the jet emitted by the 3-billion-solar-mass black hole at the heart of galaxy M87 (Feb. 1998) Credit: NASA/ESA and John Biretta (STScI/JHU) Even though black holes — by their definition and very nature — are the ultimate hoarders of the Universe, gathering and gobbling up matter and energy to the extent that not [...]

Read the full article →

The Milky Way’s Black Hole Shoots Out Brightest Flare Ever

November 7, 2012

This false-color image shows the central region of our Milky Way Galaxy as seen by Chandra. The bright, point-like source at the center of the image was produced by a huge X-ray flare that occurred in the vicinity of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. Image: NASA/MIT/F. Baganoff et al. For [...]

Read the full article →

Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole is Feasting on Asteroids

February 8, 2012

For the past several years, the Chandra telescope has detected X-ray flares occurring about once a day from the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. These flares last a few hours with brightness ranging from a few times to nearly one hundred times that of the black hole’s regular output. [...]

Read the full article →
Remove this ad

← Previous Entries