All articles tagged with #supermassive black hole
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured a striking image of the barred spiral galaxy IC 486, about 380 million light-years away, revealing an active galactic nucleus powered by a supermassive black hole over 100 million solar masses. The AGN outshines much of the galaxy and its accretion disk heats surrounding gas, offering a window into how galaxies grow and evolve and how bars funnel gas to fuel star formation and nuclear activity.
A new, large mosaic image of the Milky Way’s center captured by the ALMA telescope array in the Chilean Atacama Desert reveals cold molecular gas across the Central Molecular Zone in unprecedented detail over a span of about 650 light-years, highlighting gas filaments and clouds around the galaxy’s central supermassive black hole. The image, produced by stitching many observations, is the largest ALMA image to date and offers insight into how stars form in extreme galactic centers, informing theories of galaxy growth and evolution. The study identifies complex chemistry across dozens of gas structures and foreshadows deeper studies with future upgrades like ALMA’s wideband sensitivity and ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope.
Astronomers report continued, years-long radio brightening from the tidal disruption event AT2018hyz around a distant supermassive black hole. The energy output has surged to about 50 times its initial level and rivals a gamma-ray burst, with two possible explanations: a delayed spherical outflow launched roughly 1.7 years after disruption, or an off-axis relativistic jet; the emission is expected to peak around 2027, prompting ongoing multi-frequency monitoring to see if this unusual delayed brightening occurs in other TDEs.
Astronomers using LOFAR and the upgraded GMRT detected a once-dormant supermassive black hole at the heart of galaxy J1007+3540 reigniting, driving a colossal jet and an aging outer cocoon spanning about 1 million light-years. The radio structures reveal episodic AGN activity influenced by the hot gas in the surrounding galaxy cluster, illustrating how galactic nuclei turn on and off over cosmic timescales (publication: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society).
The James Webb Space Telescope has potentially confirmed the first observed case of a supermassive black hole escaping its host galaxy at 2.2 million mph, leaving behind a trail of young stars and creating a shockwave, providing new insights into galaxy and black hole dynamics.
Using the JWST, astronomers observed the galaxy Virgil transforming from a seemingly normal galaxy into a 'cosmic monster' with a supermassive black hole at its core, revealing insights into early galaxy evolution and the potential existence of hidden black hole populations in the universe.
Astronomers have observed a supermassive black hole, RBH-1, escaping its galaxy at nearly 1,000 km/s, leaving a trail of newborn stars and a shock front, confirming long-standing theories about black hole ejections during galaxy mergers, with implications for galaxy evolution and future discoveries.
Astronomers using JWST have confirmed the existence of RBH-1, a supermassive black hole at least 10 million times the Sun's mass, ejected from its galaxy at 954 km/s likely due to a merger and gravitational recoil, providing empirical evidence for long-predicted black hole ejection mechanisms.
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope confirmed the existence of a runaway supermassive black hole, 10 million times the sun's mass, moving at 2.2 million mph through the Cosmic Owl galaxies, leaving a trail of star-forming gas and shock waves, and providing new insights into black hole ejections during galaxy mergers.
Scientists have discovered a supermassive black hole in a distant galaxy devouring matter at 2.4 times the Eddington limit, providing evidence for super-Eddington accretion which may explain how black holes grew so rapidly in the early universe, challenging existing theories about black hole formation and growth.
Astronomers have discovered a supermassive black hole, RACS J0320-35, in the early universe that is growing at over twice the theoretical limit, challenging existing models of black hole growth and cosmic evolution, and prompting new questions about the formation of massive cosmic structures.
Astronomers have discovered the most massive black hole ever measured, located at the center of the Cosmic Horseshoe galaxy, with a mass of 36 billion Suns, providing new insights into black hole and galaxy growth.,
Astronomers have discovered a supermassive black hole, RACS J0320-35, in the early universe that is growing at 2.4 times the theoretical Eddington limit, challenging current understanding of black hole growth and suggesting such rapid growth may be more common in the early cosmos.
Astronomers have discovered a supermassive black hole, RACS J0320-35, in the early universe that is growing at 2.4 times the theoretical Eddington limit, challenging current models of black hole growth and raising questions about how such massive objects formed so quickly after the Big Bang.
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have discovered QSO1, a supermassive black hole of 50 million solar masses that appears to be rogue and without a galaxy, challenging existing theories of black hole formation and suggesting it may be a primordial or direct-collapse black hole formed in the early universe.