Category Astronomy/Space

Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory, astronomers from the University of Alabama in Huntsville have investigated the central region of the galaxy NGC 1600, focusing on its ultramassive black hole (UMBH). Results of the study, presented in a paper published February 11 on the arXiv pre-print server, shed more light on the properties of this UMBH.

At a distance of about 150,000,000 light years away from the Earth, NGC 1600 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Eridanus...

The Milky Way’s central molecular zone (CMZ) spans the innermost 1600 light-years of the galaxy (for comparison, the Sun is 26,600 light-years away from the galactic center) and includes a vast complex of molecular clouds containing about sixty million solar-masses of molecular gas. The gas in these clouds exists under more extreme physical conditions than elsewhere in the galaxy on average, with higher densities and temperatures, more intense pressures, magnetic fields, and turbulence, and higher cosmic-ray abundances and ultraviolet and X-ray radiation...

New observations of the first black hole ever detected have led astronomers to question what they know about the Universe’s most mysterious objects.

Published today in the journal Science, the research shows the system known as Cygnus X-1 contains the most massive stellar-mass black hole ever detected without the use of gravitational waves.

Cygnus X-1 is one of the closest black holes to Earth. It was discovered in 1964 when a pair of Geiger counters were carried on board a sub-orbital rocket launched from New Mexico.

The object was the focus of a famous scientific wager between ...

The largest, most advanced rover NASA has sent to another world touched down on Mars Thursday, after a 203-day journey traversing 293 million miles (472 million kilometers)...