supermassive black holes – Astronomy Now

Tangled magnetic fields may power jets from supermassive black holes

14 December 2018 Astronomy Now

New computer simulations show tangled magnetic fields in jets streaming away from supermassive black holes may be creating powerful electric fields and currents accelerating particles to enormous energies

Merging galactic black holes focus of new survey

9 November 2018 Astronomy Now

Astronomers are getting their best views yet of supermassive black holes in the cores of colliding galaxies moving toward mergers, rapidly growing as they gorge on stellar debris

Scientists say observations confirm black hole at Milky Way’s core

31 October 2018 Astronomy Now

New Observations of infrared flares at the heart of the Milky Way confirm the presence of a 4-million-solar-mass black hole lurking in the dust-shrouded core of Earth’s galaxy, scientists say.

Quasar provides clues about conditions in the early Universe

10 July 2018 Astronomy Now

Astronomers have found a brilliant quasar harbouring a super-massive black hole some 13 billion light years away, one of the most distant ever discovered, providing a tool of sorts to study conditions in the very early Universe.

Mystery objects whizzing about in Milky Way’s core

8 June 2018 Astronomy Now

Spectrographic data indicates several unusual compact dusty objects are circling the supermassive black hole at the core of the Milky Way, the possible result of stellar mergers triggered by the hole’s titanic gravity.

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.

Jupiter’s moons, black holes, exoplanets among JWST’s first scientific targets

4 December 2017 Stephen Clark

The James Webb Space Telescope should start returning its first scientific results by the end of 2019, and scientists recently announced a slate of observations selected to whet the appetites of astronomers who will use the multibillion-dollar facility well into the 2020s.

Supermassive black holes feed on cosmic jellyfish

26 August 2017 Astronomy Now

Observations of “Jellyfish galaxies” with ESO’s Very Large Telescope have revealed a previously unknown way to fuel supermassive black holes. It seems the mechanism that produces the tentacles of gas and newborn stars that give these galaxies their nickname also makes it possible for the gas to reach the central regions of the galaxies, feeding the black hole that lurks in each of them and causing it to shine brilliantly.

Astronomers detect orbital motion in pair of supermassive black holes

28 June 2017 Astronomy Now

Using the supersharp radio “vision” of the National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array, astronomers have made the first detection of orbital motion in a pair of supermassive black holes in a galaxy some 750 million light-years from Earth.

Unexpected gaseous haloes detected around distant quasars

26 October 2016 Astronomy Now

An international team of astronomers has discovered glowing gas clouds surrounding distant quasars. The new survey of these active galaxies indicates that haloes around quasars are far more common than expected. The properties of the haloes in this surprising find are also in striking disagreement with currently accepted theories of galaxy formation in the early universe.