Since the 1970s, astronomers have observed that supermassive black holes (SMBHs) reside at the centers of most massive galaxies. In some cases, these black holes accelerate gas and dust from their poles, forming relativistic jets that can extend for thousands of light-years. Using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, a team of astronomers observed the jet emanating from the center of M87, the supermassive galaxy located 53.5 million light-years away. To their surprise, the team observed nova erupting along the jet’s trajectory, twice as many as they observed in M87 itself.
Continue reading “Jets From Supermassive Black Holes Create New Stars Along Their Trajectory”The JWST Reveals the Nature of Dust Around an Active Galactic Nuclei
Supermassive Black Holes (SMBHs) are located in the centers of large galaxies like ours. When they’re actively feeding, they produce more light and are called active galactic nuclei (AGN). But their details are difficult to observe clearly because large clouds of gas block our view.
The JWST was built just for circumstances like these.
Continue reading “The JWST Reveals the Nature of Dust Around an Active Galactic Nuclei”The Brightest Gamma Ray Burst Ever Seen Came from a Collapsing Star
After a journey lasting about two billion years, photons from an extremely energetic gamma-ray burst (GRB) struck the sensors on the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope on October 9th, 2022. The GRB lasted seven minutes but was visible for much longer. Even amateur astronomers spotted the powerful burst in visible frequencies.
It was so powerful that it affected Earth’s atmosphere, a remarkable feat for something more than two billion light-years away. It’s the brightest GRB ever observed, and since then, astrophysicists have searched for its source.
Continue reading “The Brightest Gamma Ray Burst Ever Seen Came from a Collapsing Star”Watch 14 Years of Gamma-Ray Observations in This Fascinating NASA Video
The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, named in honor of noted physicist Enrico Fermi, has been in operation for almost a decade and a half, monitoring the cosmos for gamma rays. As the highest-energy form of light, these rays are produced by extremely energetic phenomena – like supernovae, neutron stars, quasars, and gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). In honor of this observatory’s long history, NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center has released a time-lapse movie that shows data acquired by the Fermi Space Telescope between August 2008 and August 2022.
Continue reading “Watch 14 Years of Gamma-Ray Observations in This Fascinating NASA Video”A Black Hole Consumed a Star and Released the Light of a Trillion Suns
When a flash of light appears somewhere in the sky, astronomers notice. When it appears in a region of the sky not known to host a stellar object that’s flashed before, they really sit up and take notice. In astronomical parlance, objects that emit flashing light are called transients.
Earlier this year, astronomers spotted a transient that flashed with the light of a trillion Suns.
Continue reading “A Black Hole Consumed a Star and Released the Light of a Trillion Suns”A Black Hole is Hurling a jet of Material at its Neighboring Galaxy
It’s been a banner time for black hole research! In recent months, astrophysicists have announced the discovery of the most powerful gamma-ray burst ever recorded (due to the formation of a black hole), a monster black hole in our cosmic backyard, the frame-dragging effects of a binary black hole, and the remains of the 2017 Kilonova event (spoiler alert: it was a black hole). And with the help of citizen scientists, a team of astronomers recently discovered a unique black hole in a galaxy roughly one billion light-years away that’s hurling a relativistic jet at another galaxy.
Continue reading “A Black Hole is Hurling a jet of Material at its Neighboring Galaxy”Astronomers Find a Black Hole That was Somehow Pushed Over Onto its Side
The planets in our Solar System all rotate on axes that roughly match the Sun’s rotational axis. This agreement between the axes of rotation is the typical arrangement in any system in space where smaller objects orbit a larger one.
But in one distant binary system, the large central object has an axis of rotation tilted about 40 degrees compared to its smaller satellite. This situation is even more strange because the main body isn’t a star but a black hole.
Continue reading “Astronomers Find a Black Hole That was Somehow Pushed Over Onto its Side”The Event Horizon Telescope Zooms in on Another Supermassive Black Hole
On April 10th, 2019, the world was treated to the first image of a black hole, courtesy of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). Specifically, the image was of the Supermassive Black Hole (SMBH) at the center of the supergiant elliptical galaxy known as M87 (aka. Virgo A). These powerful forces of nature are found at the centers of most massive galaxies, which include the Milky Way (where the SMBH known as Sagittarius A* is located).
Using a technique known as Very-Long-Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), this image signaled the birth of a new era for astronomers, where they can finally conduct detailed studies of these powerful forces of nature. Thanks to research performed by the EHT Collaboration team during a six-hour observation period in 2017, astronomers are now being treated to images of the core region of Centaurus A and the radio jet emanating from it.
Continue reading “The Event Horizon Telescope Zooms in on Another Supermassive Black Hole”Quasars are the Biggest Particle Accelerators in the Universe
We puny humans think we can accelerate particles? Look how proud we are of the Large Hadron Collider. But any particle accelerator we build will pale in comparison to Quasars, nature’s champion accelerators.
Those things are beasts.
Read moreBlack Hole Seen Blasting Out Jets at Close to the Speed of Light
The Chandra X-Ray Observatory has spotted a distant black hole shooting out jets of material, at close to the speed of light. No worries, this beast is about 10,000 light years away from us. It’s more of a spectacle than a danger.
But it’s a spectacle laden with scientific insights.
Continue reading “Black Hole Seen Blasting Out Jets at Close to the Speed of Light”