black hole – Page 2 – Astronomy Now

When black holes devour stars, it all depends on how you look at it

30 May 2018 Astronomy Now

Black holes devouring nearby stars generate a variety of effects, but a new model suggests what is seen on Earth depends on the hole’s orientation and the viewing angle. Surveys are planned to search for more such tidal disruption events.

NASA hails now-departed Rossi X-ray observer

7 May 2018 Astronomy Now

NASA’s Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, decommissioned in 2012, fell back into the atmosphere and burned up 30 April, finally bringing a remarkably successful mission to study black holes and neutron stars to a fiery end.

Supermassive black holes growing faster than expected

4 March 2018 Astronomy Now

Supermassive black holes lurking in the hearts of countless galaxies are growing faster than astronomers suspected based on earlier studies.

New tool for gravitational wave detection

28 January 2018 Astronomy Now

New “deep learning” algorithms are expected to improve the detection of gravitational wave signals and, with additional work, may help identify electromagnetic counterparts to gravity wave events

NASA’s Swift mission maps a star’s ‘death spiral’ into a black hole

21 March 2017 Stephen Clark

Some 290 million years ago, a star much like the sun wandered too close to the central black hole of its galaxy. Intense tides tore the star apart, which produced an eruption of optical, ultraviolet and X-ray light that first reached Earth in 2014.

Star discovered in closest known orbit around likely black hole

14 March 2017 Stephen Clark

Astronomers have found evidence for a star that whips around a black hole about twice an hour. This may be the tightest orbital dance ever witnessed for a likely black hole and a companion star.

Our galaxy’s black hole is spewing out planet-size ‘spitballs’

23 January 2017 Stephen Clark

Every few thousand years, an unlucky star wanders too close to the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. The black hole’s powerful gravity rips the star apart, sending a long streamer of gas whipping outward. That would seem to be the end of the story, but it’s not. New research shows that not only can the gas gather itself into planet-size objects, but those objects then are flung throughout the galaxy in a game of cosmic “spitball.”

Spinning black hole swallowing star explains superluminous event

13 December 2016 Astronomy Now

An extraordinarily brilliant point of light seen in a distant galaxy, and dubbed ASASSN-15lh, was thought to be the brightest supernova ever seen. But new observations from several observatories, including ESO and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, have now cast doubt on this classification.

A stellar circle of life near Cygnus X-3

22 November 2016 Astronomy Now

A discovery that provides a new way to study how stars form has been captured in a new portrait from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Smithsonian’s Submillimetre Array (SMA). A cloud that is giving birth to stars has been observed to reflect X-rays from Cygnus X-3, a source of X-rays produced by a system where a massive star is slowly being eaten by its companion black hole or neutron star.

Fast radio bursts born in cosmic cataclysms

15 November 2016 Astronomy Now

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) were first discovered in 2007, and in the years since radio astronomers have detected a few dozen of these events. Researchers have found that these mysterious “cosmic whistles” can release a billion times more energy in gamma-rays than they do in radio waves, rivalling supernovae in their explosive power.