Astronomers have captured the first image of polarized light and the magnetic fields surrounding Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milly Way. The historic observation made with the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has revealed that the neatly arranged magnetic fields resemble those around the supermassive black hole at … Read more
Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have discovered an ‘extremely red’ supermassive black hole growing in the shadowy early universe. The red hue of the supermassive black hole, seen as it appeared about 700 million years after the Big Bang, is the result of the expanding universe. As the universe moves outward in … Read more
Astronomers have discovered one of the most powerful black hole eruptions ever – and this immense explosion, which took place almost 4 billion years ago, formed a pattern of stars in clusters that resemble jewelry. The star chain adorns a huge cluster of hundreds of galaxies called SDSS J1531; this body is located about 3.8 … Read more
“Which came first: the galaxy or its monstrous black hole?” Technically, it’s an even older riddle than the chicken or the egg, even though we only became aware of it relatively recently. And according to new research, scientists may finally have an answer. It has long been believed that supermassive black holes that existed close … Read more
Scientists may have found evidence that black vampire holes that feed on their victim stars – so-called microquasars – are the cosmic particle accelerators responsible for mysterious high-energy cosmic rays we see bombarding Earth. These stellar-mass black holes exist in binary systems with a supergiant star from which they greedily strip material. Some of that … Read more
The second image of the first black hole ever captured by humanity shows its shadow still lingering a year later. The newly released image of the supermassive black hole at the heart of the galaxy Messier 87 (M87) was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) on April 21, 2018, one year and ten days … Read more
A team of astronomers has used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to discover the most distant and oldest black hole ever as it feasts on its host galaxy. The discovery could be a huge step forward in understanding how supermassive black holes reached masses millions of billions of times greater than the Sun in … Read more
NASA scientists have spotted a stunning cosmic fossil that was formed when a supermassive black hole erupted more than 5 million years ago. The team at the space agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center used the X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission (XMM-Newton) space telescope with help from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to spot the X-rays that outline cold … Read more