This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the spiral galaxy NGC 4845, located over 65 million light-years away in the constellation of Virgo. In 2013 researchers noticed a violent flare from the black hole at the centre of NGC 4845 as it tore up and fed off an object many times more massive than Jupiter that strayed too close and was devoured.
A team of Spanish astrophysicists has obtained precise measurements for the innermost region of a disc of matter in orbital motion around a supermassive black hole in the lensed quasar known as Einstein’s Cross (Q2237-0305). It constitutes the most precise set of measurements achieved to date for such a small and distant object.
An international team of astrophysicists has for the first time witnessed a black hole swallowing a star and ejecting a flare of matter moving at nearly the speed of light. The scientists tracked the Sun-sized star in the galaxy PGC 43234 some 300 million light-years away as it shifted from its customary path, slipped into the gravitational pull of the supermassive black hole and was sucked in.
Scientists often use the combined power of multiple telescopes to reveal the secrets of the universe — and this image of elliptical galaxy Hercules A is a prime example of when this technique is strikingly effective. Radio observations with the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array were combined with the Hubble visible-light data obtained with the Wide Field Camera 3 to create this striking composite image.
A team of astronomers working at the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics have discovered an extremely rare galaxy of gigantic size using the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT). Known as J021659-044920, the galaxy is located about 9 billion light-years away, emits powerful radio waves and has an enormous extent of 4 million light-years.
Galaxy clusters are often described by superlatives. After all, they are huge conglomerations of galaxies, hot gas, and dark matter, representing the largest structures in the universe held together by gravity. New observations of the galaxy cluster SPT-CLJ2344-4243 (or Phoenix Cluster) at X-ray, ultraviolet, and optical wavelengths are helping astronomers better understand this extraordinary system.
The central supermassive black hole of a recently discovered galaxy called SAGE0536AGN is far larger than should be possible, according to current theories of galactic evolution. The galaxy was found by accident with NASA’s Spitzer space telescope and is thought to be at least 9 billion years old. Time will tell whether SAGE0536AGN really is an oddball, or simply the first in a new class of galaxies.
The centre of our Milky Way galaxy is a mysterious place. Not only is it thousands of light-years away, it’s also cloaked in so much dust that most stars within are rendered invisible. Harvard researchers are proposing a new way to clear the fog and spot stars hiding there. They suggest looking for radio waves coming from supersonic stars.
Astronomers have found evidence for a faded electron cloud “coming back to life,” much like the mythical phoenix, after two galaxy clusters collided. This “radio phoenix,” so-called because the high-energy electrons radiate primarily at radio frequencies, is found in Abell 1033. This galaxy cluster collision is located about 1.6 billion light-years from Earth.
© 2019 Pole Star Publications Limited